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P.S.1 Newspaper

2008 Spring

Marina Abramovic: Nobody Escapes

Artist Marina Abramovic in conversation with P.S.1 Director Alanna Heiss and Swedish journalist Ingela Lind.

Alanna Heiss and Marina Abramovic

Courtesy P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center

Alanna Heiss: I recently hired Marina’s physical trainer desperately trying to look like her. He trained Marina only for the extravagantly physically difficult installations. He said to me “She’s more of an athlete and she trains better than anyone I’ve ever trained. She is in fact training for death.”

Marina Abramovic: I don’t do any preparation before a performance. People think I am sitting there meditating but this is completely false. For example, the day before House with an Ocean View—a performance where I didn’t eat or drink or sleep for 12 hours at the Sean Kelly gallery—I had lamb chops, a glass of wine and chocolate mousse, which is nothing you should have before a performance like this. It’s not about physical preparation but really mental preparation.

AH: How do you prepare for that?

MA: You’re born with it! Either you have it or you don’t have it. I come from a strange background—my father was a national hero and my mother was a major in the army so you can imagine that it was a hell of a childhood. My theory is that the more fucked up your childhood is, the better artist you are.

Ingela Lind: I had the great opportunity of attending your performance in Rome. There you were hanging from the ceiling, from a platform in the middle of the room just like a crucified body or a goddess. You were half-naked and crawling all over your arms were pythons. Everyone was scared to hell. What you’re doing now in your art is looking straight at the public and you’re fighting fear.

MA: Many people ask if I can do my performances alone but I would never have the strength. In my life, I’m almost vulnerable; I’m a simple, ordinary person. I always need the public. And the public for me is holy. The public is present and completely focused on what I’m doing and I’m focused on them. We create a situation that we can call the “here and now”; that nothing escapes. Even if someone has to go to the toilet, I feel physical pain because I need them to be there. I can’t lose anyone when performing. It’s very important to create this very strong dialogue with the public.
 
IL: I’m remembering something that you told me a year ago. You thought that museums were going back to restoring holy icons. That is the work. But you want to go back to the process.

MA: It’s fascinating that you bring this up. About two years ago, the director of a Viennese museum attempted something new. He completely emptied the entire museum and created a large symposium on the future of the museum, discussing topics like “What can we do for the museum? What kind of work and attitude must we adopt?” The dialogues were very interesting because we never could come to a solution. How can  the work be presented in a contemporary museum in the 20th century and how do we avoid the 19th century structures? So many works are interactive and the public needs to take part in it. Museums fear this because the artworks are never supposed to be touched; you always have to look from a distance. How do we deal with this?  We need to reinvent a structure and I don’t think this will happen so soon.

AH: Do you think that museums are in fact the proper place for you to be making your work? 

MA: I think that museums are modern temples.

AH: If you continue the metaphor of church, who would be the priests and who would be the organizers of the museum experience?

MA: Artists are of course the priests. I have to ask: are we afraid to just feel good and be harmonious in the museum space? Do we have to struggle all the time? Maybe museums are just there to instruct what happened, make it an icon and that’s it. We forget the bad memories and just remember the good ones. There’s a wonderful story of a woman in France who lived to be 120 years old. On her 120th birthday, she was examined by doctors to find out how she could live so long. They discovered that she couldn’t remember any bad things in life. It’s fantastic that we have the ability to block bad energy and as such, we can be totally preserved.