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I Want To Die Consciously, Without Fear, And Without Anger. Three Things. I See My Friends Dying With Fear And Anger And It's Terrible. My Grandmother Kept Her Clothes Ready For 40 Years For Her Funeral. She Lived To 103! But She Kept The Clothes In A Cupboard. As The Styles Changed, She Changed The Clothes! I Think If I Start Now With My Funeral, It's Good.

-Marina Abramovic

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I Want To Die

Marina Abramovic

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I Want To Die Consciously, Without Fear, And Without Anger. Three Things. I See My Friends Dying With Fear And Anger And It's Terrible. My Grandmother Kept Her Clothes Ready For 40 Years For Her Funeral. She Lived To 103! But She Kept The Clothes In A Cupboard. As The Styles Changed, She Changed The Clothes! I Think If I Start Now With My Funeral, It's Good.

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I Hate Studio. For Me, Studio Is A Trap To Overproduce And Repeat Yourself. It Is A Habit That Leads To Art Pollution.

Once, Picasso Was Asked What His Paintings Meant. He Said, “do You Ever Know What The Birds Are Singing? You Don’t. But You Listen To Them Anyway.” So, Sometimes With Art, It Is Important Just To Look.

When I First Had A Video Camera To Document A Performance, It Was In Sweden And I Remember It Was Really Crucial For Me.

What You Get Is The Opening Of Your Mind. I'm Not Preaching Any New Religion; I'm Ritualizing Everyday Activities. You Drink The Water. You Count The Rice. You Sit In Crystal Cave. You Lie In Levitation Chamber. You Push Yourself To A New Level.

I Believe That Life Is Shorter; That Is Why We Have To Make Experience Longer.

You Know, James Franco Is One Of The Most Interesting Figures Because He Has No Rules. He Breaks All The Borders.

When You Have So Much Pain, You Think You Will Lose Consciousness. If You Say To Yourself, ‘so What, Lose Consciousness,’ The Pain Goes Away.

There Are So Many Rules In The Art World. I Don't Like Rules And I Break Them All The Time. I Don't Care If People Think I'm Overexposed. What I Care About Is If I'm Going To Run Out Of Energy. Overexposure Is Only A Problem If You Are Drained Of Energy And Cannot Come Up With New Ideas. Every Artist Has To Recognize That And Know When To Stop For A Moment.

If We Go For The Easy Way, Then We Never Change.

To Control The Breathing Is To Control The Mind. With Different Patterns Of Breathing, You Can Fall In Love, You Can Hate Someone, You Can Feel The Whole Spectrum Of Feelings Just By Changing Your Breathing.

Falling In Love

We Always Want To Do Things The Way We Like, That's Why We Never Change.

The Experience I Learned Was That … If You Leave Decision To The Public, You Can Be Killed… I Felt Really Violated: They Cut My Clothes, Stuck Rose Thorns In My Stomach, One Person Aimed The Gun At My Head, And Another Took It Away. It Created An Aggressive Atmosphere. After Exactly 6 Hours, As Planned, I Stood Up And Started Walking Toward The Public. Everyone Ran Away, Escaping An Actual Confrontation.

Time Is An Illusion. Time Only Exists When We Think About The Past And The Future. Time Doesn't Exist In The Present Here And Now.

I'm Talking About Intellectually And Emotionally Challenging, But At The Same Time It's Actually Not That Challenging. So There's This Dichotomy.

I Always Do Big Birthday Things. In Three Years, I'm 70. I'm Going To Do Something Outrageous. In America, Everyone's Always Hiding Their Age.

I Had Such An Intense Relationship To Every Person. I Still See People On The Street And We Lock Eyes, And Say "oh My God!" And We Just Kiss And Stay Like That And Sometimes Cry.

If You Look At The Lives Of Artists, Sitting In Nature, Painting, Having The Freedom. I Think It's Over. I Think We're Living In Such A Difficult Moment Of Human Development. Artists Have More Responsibility Than Ever Before.

The Only Way To Change Consciousness And The World Around Us Is To Start With Yourself.

That's Something That I'm Trying To Do In My Work, To Send A Message To Western People. They're The Ones Who Are Completely Disconnected.

In Real Life, You Just Work For The Ordinary Self, But In The Front Of Audience You Become The Superself. That's A Completely Different Thing.

I Made A Tape Recording Of A Bridge Collapsing And I Wanted To Play It Suddenly And Very Loudly When People Were Walking Over A Big Bridge In Belgrade. The Council Forbid It. Their Imagination Is Tiny; Mine Is Big. I Want Always To Shake Everything Up.

Americans Aren't Accepting Of Black Humor, It's Terrible.

Americans Don't Like European Movies.

Galás Is A Great Artist With A Very Powerful Voice.

In Every Culture, [there Are Those] Shamans Or Medicine Men Who Endured Incredible Physical Pain, Because It's A Door Opening To The Subconsciousness. And The Way We Can Actually Control The Pain -- It's How To Control Everything. This Is The Key.

I Serve Like A Bridge. I Go To Other Cultures, Learn, Put Myself In Different Situations And Learn As Much As I Can, And Then Go To Western Cultures To Give. I'm Doing This Bridging All The Time.

Art Comes From Life, Not From The Studio

People Put So Much Effort Into Starting A Relationship And So Little Effort Into Ending One.

You See, What Is My Purpose Of Performance Artist Is To Stage Certain Difficulties And Stage The Fear The Primordial Fear Of Pain, Of Dying, All Of Which We Have In Our Lives, And Then Stage Them In Front Of Audience And Go Through Them And Tell The Audience, I'm Your Mirror; If I Can Do This In My Life, You Can Do It In Yours.

When Lady Gaga Says I Am Her Inspiration, You Reach Kids Between 12 And 18. Now I Am Like A Brand - Jeans, Coca-cola.

All My Inspiration Comes From Life. That's How It Never Stops, In A Way.

My Mother And Father Had A Terrible Marriage. They Celebrated Their Wedding Anniversary One Year With Their Friends. Why Did They Celebrate? Maybe Because They Had Lasted So Many Years Without Killing Each Other.

Wedding Anniversary

Artists Should Never Think Of Themselves As An Idol. Fame Is A Side Effect Of One's Work.

Immaterial Art Is The Strongest Because There's No Obstacle; There's Just Energy, And I Believe In Energy.

I Really Like Dark, Politically Incorrect Humor.

From The Moment You Are Born, You Could Die. I Think As An Artist It Is Important To Meditate On That.

There's Nothing More Tragic Than Artists From The 70s Still Doing Art From The 70s.

We Always Think Of Our Own Profit, But Not In Connection To Others.

You Go To India And You See The Poorest Village Somewhere In The Middle Of India. And The Poor Family Is Happier Than Any Rich Billionaire In This Country Because Of Spirituality.

I Want To Dominate The Man's World.

The Brother Of My Grandfather Was The Patriarch Of The Orthodox Church And Revered As A Saint. So Everything In My Childhood Is About Total Sacrifice, Whether To Religion Or To Communism. This Is What Is Engraved On Me. This Is Why I Have This Insane Willpower. My Body Is Now Beginning To Be Falling Apart, But I Will Do It To The End. I Don't Care. With Me It Is About Whatever It Takes.

I Am Very Clear That I Am Not A Feminist. It Puts You Into A Category And I Don't Like That.

Why Not Do Something Strange And Different For Once? Artists Can Do Whatever They Want!

You Know The Movie "rashomon" From [takeshi] Kurosawa, When All The People In The Forest See Something Different? Each Performance Was Like That.

I Hate Repetition. Even When I Am Home And Have To Buy Milk, I Go A Different Way Each Time To Avoid Having A Habit Of Anything. Habits Are Really Bad. So To Me It Is Really Important To Live In What I Call The Spaces In-between. Bus Stations, Trains, Taxis Or Waiting Rooms In Airports Are The Best Places Because You Are Open To Destiny, You Are Open To Everything And Anything Can Happen.

Today, Our Attention Is Less Than The Television Advertisement. We're Looking At Six Or Seven Problems Constantly. We're Living In The Disturbed Societies Of Cities. I Think Modern Technology Is One Of The Worst Things Human Beings Have Invented.

It's Okay That We're Not Perfect. It's Okay That We All Have Problems. It's Okay To Cry, To Show Emotions.

You Know, Art Is Very Emotional Business. But Mostly It Becomes Not Emotional, The Fabric Of Commodity. It Becomes Business. It Becomes So Many Different Things. Because We Forgot There Was Emotions Involved.

Even Now, I Have Traces Of The Good Little Girl. When I Am Not Performing, For Instance, I Am Really Very Quiet And Ordinary.

When You Have A Nonverbal Conversation With A Total Stranger, Then He Cant Cover Himself With Words, He Cant Create A Wall.

The World Doesn't Need An Artist Who Shows Reality As It Is

I Hate Kitchens. I Don't Understand These Enormous American Kitchens That Take Up Half The Living Room And Then They Just Order Pizza.

I Want To Die Consciously, Without Fear, And Without Anger. Three Things. I See My Friends Dying With Fear And Anger And It's Terrible. My Grandmother Kept Her Clothes Ready For 40 Years For Her Funeral. She Lived To 103! But She Kept The Clothes In A Cupboard. As The Styles Changed, She Changed The Clothes! I Think If I Start Now With My Funeral, It's Good.

My Memoirs Are Full Of Humor, I Had To Change Jokes Because It Was A Little Too Dark.

I Never Say Serbia. I Always Say I Come From A Country That No Longer Exists.

I Have A Problem With Being A Hero, But That's Another Problem.

I Realise The Power Of Art That Does Not Hang On The Walls Of Galleries.

When You're 50, The Best Thing To Do Is Dance The Argentinean Tango.

I've Always Asked Myself Since I Was Young, What Is My Duty On This Planet? What Am I There For? Just To Hang Around? Everybody Must Have Some Purpose.

I Didn't Give Any Instruction To The Video, Because It Was A New Medium. I Didn't Know What To Tell Him; It Was So Young. I Did The Piece And Immediately After The Piece, I Wanted To See The Material.

Your Ego Can Become An Obstacle To Your Work. If You Start Believing In Your Greatness, It Is The Death Of Your Creativity.

You Know I Very Much Respect Yvonne Rainer, She Is Very Important - In American Dance, The Entire Development Of Modern Dance, And Creating A Wonderful Physical Language.

You Know, My Mother Never Thought I Would Do Anything Good In My Life, And I Was Standing In This Opera With Four Gold Medals! If She Were Alive, Maybe She'd Think I Was Doing Well!

Most Artists Create Foundations Where They Put Their Own Work. Here I'm Not Putting My Own Work. I'm Just Creating The Chambers.

In The Performer's Body, You Don't Care How You Look. It Doesn't Matter If You're Old, Fat, Beautiful, Or Ugly. It Doesn't Change Anything. The Only Thing Is Your Charisma And How You Express Your Idea.

I Had To Leave Some Traces. In The Beginning, I Would Give Complete Instructions To The Photographer. In The '70s, People Would Come To Photograph Your Work And You Would Just End Up With This Crazy Material That Had Nothing To Do With Your Work; Maybe I'd Pick Up Two Or Three Photographs That Were The Closest To The Idea. This Is Why When You Look At The '70s, You See Much Less Documentation And Really Bad Material. The Material Will Become Misleading To What The Piece Was.

The Public Is In Need Of Experiences That Are Not Just Voyeuristic. Our Society Is In A Mess Of Losing Its Spiritual Centre.

The Only Thing I Have Learned Is To Find Strength In Yourself. No One Can Help You, No One Can Do Anything For You, You Have To Do The Work Yourself.

Finding Strength

We Are Always In The Space In-between... All The Spaces Where You Are Not Actually At Home. You Haven't Arrived Yet.... This Is Where Our Mind Is The Most Open. We Are Alert, We Are Sensitive, And Destiny Can Happen. We Do Not Have Any Barriers And We Are Vulnerable. Vulnerability Is Important. It Means We Are Completely Alive And This Is An Extremely Important Space. This Is For Me The Space From Which My Work Generates.

The Function Of The Artist In A Disturbed Society Is To Give Awareness Of The Universe, To Ask The Right Questions, And To Elevate The Mind.

People Ask Why There Are So Few Female Artists Who Succeed. It's Because Women Are Not Ready To Sacrifice As Much As Men. Women Want A Man, They Want A Family, They Want To Have Children, They Want To Be Loved, And To Be An Artist. And They Can't; It's Impossible.

I Think The Role Of Artists In The Past Was Very Different. Artists Had Less Responsibility In Many Ways.

A Great Artist Has To Be Ready To Fail.

In My Work I Have Complete Control, But About My Life, I Don't Want To.

My Work Is Immaterial. It's Not Painting, It's Not Sculpture, It's Emotions. I'm Giving You Something To Experience Yourself.

Experience Yourself

You Create A Friendship On A Level That You've Never Done Before. The Basic Kind Of Experience Is To Basically Give Love To Total Strangers All The Time, And That Really Changed Everything In Me. And This Piece Transformed Me More Than Any Other One Before. I Saw My Entire Life Differently. What Do I Have To Do? What Is My Passion On This Planet? I'm Much More Focused Than I Ever Was Before.

Because Of Technology, We Don't Develop Telepathy. We Don't Use Telepathy, But Use, You Know, The Mobile Phones. Why?

I Am Pure Performance, And Robert Wilson Is Pure Theater.

Dali Lama Said, 'when You Open The Heart Of The Person With Humor, You Can Tell Him The Most Truth. But If You Tell Him Truth Without Humor, The Heart Closes.'

I Say We Don't Need Art In Nature, Because It's So Perfect Without Us. We Need It In The Cities. But The Cities Have Absolutely Lost Their Own Center. They Think Having Ten Cars And A Big Bridge Is The Way To Happiness. It's Not.

Once You Live In New York, You Can't Live Anywhere Else. Living In Paris Is Like Going In Slow Motion. It's So Bourgeois. I Get So Bored.

The Complete Absence Of The Story - That Was The Best Thing About This Whole Thing, Because You Know That Nothing's Going To Happen And Everything's Going To Happen. It's Just The Gaze. You Create Your Own Zone.

Talking About Performance Is Such A Strange Thing Because It's So Immaterial. We Are Talking About Soft Matter. We Are Talking About Something That Is Invisible. You Can't See It. You Can't Touch It. You Just Can Feel It.

Cancer Is An Emotional Disease.

We Wanted To Prove That I Am Not Just A Provocateur, As The Television Said [referring To A Fox News Clip Shown In The Film]. It's Challenging, But It's Not Just Challenging.

We Always Project Into The Future Or Reflect In The Past, But We Are So Little In The Present.

People Ask Me What Book Politicians Should Read. They Should Read The Life Of Mahatma Gandhi.

You Should See Ballerinas' Feet. They Don't Have Nails. You See Beauty, But It's Unbelievable Pain - With A 40-year Pension! That's It, And Then Life Is Really Finished.

I Don't Know Anything About The Afterlife Because I Haven't Been There Yet.

I Didn't Get Paid For Performances Most Of My Life. If I Did, I Would Be Billionaire Now, And I'm Not.

You Know, Everyone Is Always Talking About Plastic Surgery, Or The Technology, What To Do. I Really Think It's Important To Help Yourself With The Technology If You Want To Feel Better, But I Am Absolutely Against Any Kind Of Monstrous Cuts Of The Body, Lifting That Is Beyond Recognition, This Kind Of Stuff.

A Powerful Performance Will Transform Everyone In The Room.

One Thing I Learned From His Holiness The Dali Lama Is The Importance Of Humor.

But What Is Art Other Than Revealing Human Nature?

First Of All, To Do Performance Art, You Really Have To Give 100 Percent. I Only Know That I Have To Give 100 Percent And Then What Happens, Happens.

For Me, The Most Difficult Piece Is The One I'm About To Make.

I Had A Very Difficult Relationship With My Mother. She Used To Wake Me Up In The Middle Of The Night If I Wasn't Sleeping Straight And Was Messing Up The Sheets. Now When I Stay In Hotels I Sleep So Straight They Don't Even Think I've Used The Bed.

I Believe Stories Are Very Important To All Performances. The Life Story Of The Performer Shapes Their Work, And The Life Stories Of The Audience Alter How They Receive The Work, What They Read Into The Performer.

I Believe So Much In The Power Of Performance I Don't Want To Convince People. I Want Them To Experience It And Come Away Convinced On Their Own.

Typically, The Performance Has A Story - A Beginning, The Crescendo And The End.

I Had So Much Fear Of Blood, And The First Thing I Did Was To Cut Myself To See What Happens. That's The Only Way To Rebuild Yourself.

Theatre Is Fake... The Knife Is Not Real, The Blood Is Not Real, And The Emotions Are Not Real. Performance Is Just The Opposite: The Knife Is Real, The Blood Is Real, And The Emotions Are Real.

I Am Only Interested In The Ideas That Become Obsessive And Make Me Feel Uneasy. The Ideas That I'm Afraid Of.

To Me The Pain And The Blood Are Merely Means Of Artistic Expression.

Do You Know What's Most Interesting? Working With The Very Strong Restrictions Of The Institution. In The Renaissance, The Aristocrats Would Order Paintings From The Artist. They Would Order The Crucifixion Of Jesus. The Restrictions Were Amazing. Jesus Had To Be In The Middle, Three Apostles On The Left, Four Apostles On The Right - And Still You Had Masterpieces. It's Really Interesting To Work Within Restriction, And See What You Can Do With Restriction.

I Always Sent My Mother All These Huge Books I Made. When My Mother Died, I Was Cleaning Her Cupboard, And These Big Books Were Only 20 Pages Long. She Edited Out, Maybe Burned, Every Single Photograph Where I'm Naked.

I Have Found That Long Durational Art Is Really The Key To Changing Consciousness. On Such A Deep Level. Not Just The Performer, But The One Looking At It.

We Make Such Terrible Mistakes With Visual Choices About Beauty.

Every Party Is The Same, Too Many People, Too Little Food, And You Have To Wait Around. I'm Extremely Bored With Parties.

I Just Want To Create Situations Where People Forget Time.

Most People Are More Comfortable With What Is Familiar. I’ve Spent My Life Doing The Opposite.

In Every Ancient Culture, There Are Rituals To Mortify The Body As A Way Of Understanding That The Energy Of The Soul Is Indestructible.

We, Performers, Work On Willpower. This Willpower Works In A Short Term, Not Durational.

We Are Actually Living In A Million Parallel Realities Every Single Minute.

An Artist Has To Look At The Future, To See What We Can Do Better.

Being An Artist Is Not Easy - I Have Always Said That To The Students I Have Taught Over The Years. It's A Huge Sacrifice.

Zooming In, Zooming Out. I Was Shocked. I Said, "let's Erase This Right Now, Put The Camera Behind The Stage And I'll Do The Performance Just For The Camera." He Set Up Everything And I Told Him To Go Outside And Smoke A Cigarette. Come Back When I Finish. Don't Touch The Camera. This Was The Way How I've Done Most Everything After That.

I Notice If I'm Too Fat Or If I'm Too Ugly Or There's Skin Hanging Or Whatever. When My Clothes Start Not Fitting, I Get Really Self-conscious About What I Eat.

Documentation Is Misleading, Because The Performance Is Dead. So The Very Early Works Were Not Documented At All.

If You're A Baker, Making Bread, You're A Baker. If You Make The Best Bread In The World, You're Not An Artist, But If You Bake The Bread In The Gallery, You're An Artist. So The Context Makes The Difference.

I Have Always Staged My Fears As A Way To Transcend Them.

If You're A Woman, It's Almost Impossible To Establish A Relationship. You're Too Much For Everybody. It's Too Much. The Woman Always Has To Play This Role Of Being Fragile And Dependent. And If You're Not, They're Fascinated By You, But Only For A Little While. And Then They Want To Change You And Crush You. And Then They Leave.

Talking About [donald] Trump, There's Nothing Wrong With Trump. He's Who He Is. It's Wrong With Us, Who Let Him [win]. That's What's Wrong. It's Not That He's Going To Change, But The People Who Think Like Him.

When I Was 14, I Thought I Looked Terrible. I Wore These Typical Slavic Shoes With Metal Bottoms So You Could Always Hear Me Coming And This Really Ugly Princess Skirt And Blouse With The Top Button Closed. I Had A Boy Haircut, A Baby Face Covered With Pimples, And A Really Big Nose.

Because We Never Stop Silently Loving Those Who We Once Loved Out Loud

Western Culture Has More Need Because They're So Much More Degenerated. They're So Much More Hurt, And Misbalanced Completely.

Western Culture

Through Performance, I Found The Possibility Of Establishing A Dialogue With The Audience Through An Exchange Of Energy, Which Tended To Transform The Energy Itself. I Could Not Produce A Single Work Without The Presence Of The Audience, Because The Audience Gave Me The Energy To Be Able, Through A Specific Action, To Assimilate It And Return It, To Create A Genuine Field Of Energy.

The Body Has An Enormous Power Of Healing, If You Really Believe You Are Going To Be Healed, You're Going To Be Healed. If You Really Believe You're Going To Die, You're Going To Die. If You Apply This Kind Of Method To Everything, Then There Is Hope.

Television Is Completely Another Medium.

Don't Even Ask Me Why. I Do Not Know, I Have No Answer To This Insane Behaviour.

My New Work Deals With Emptying My Body: 'boat Emptying, Stream Entering.' This Means That You Have To Empty The Body/boat To The Point Where You Can Really Be Connected With The Fields Of Energy Around You. I Think That Men And Women In Our Western Culture Are Completely Disconnected From That Energy, And In My New Work I Want To Make This Connection Possible.

I Think If People Raise Their Consciousness And Find A Purpose, Everybody Will Be Helped.

It Was Incredible, Lady Gaga Came To See The Piece. She Didn't Sit With Me, But It Was All Atwitter. Every Single Kid From 12 To 18 Ran To See Lady Gaga And Then Lady Gaga Left And They Stayed. And They Stayed Another Day Another Day And It Created A Completely Different Culture, A Different Audience That I Never Had Before.

Performance Has To Be Mainstream Art. This Is What I'm Fighting For.

The Hardest Thing To Do Is Something That Is Close To Nothing.

We're Destroying The Planet, And The Planet Rebels.

We Are Used To Cleaning The Outside House, But The Most Important House To Clean Is Yourself - Your Own House - Which We Never Do.

If You Are Really True To Yourself And Really Follow Your Intuition In The Most Rigorous Way, There Is A Moment That Becomes Universal, That Reaches Everybody. That’s The Real Magic Of Björk-she Teaches Us The Courage To Be Ourselves.

True Love For Whatever You Are Doing Is The Answer To Everything.

Happiness Comes From The Full Understanding Of Your Own Being.

It's Very Important That Young Artists Push Boundaries, Because Sometimes You Have This Urge To Do Something - Like The Impulsive And Dangerous Urges I Had As A Child - And If You Don't Follow Through With It You Might Miss Out On A Developmental Experience.

With Classical Ballet You Are Literally Injuring Yourself.

Television Is Completely Another Medium. For Me, Lady Gaga And Hbo Are Bringing Us To Mass Culture.

There Has Been Evolution In My Work. In The Beginning I Was Very Much Busy With The Physical Body And The Limits Of The Physical Body But That Somehow Naturally Led Me To The Mental Body And How I Could Deal With That. Stillness Is So Much Harder, Especially For Three Months. It Was A Big Challenge. As A Performer It Is The Most Difficult Experience One Can Have. And The Interactive Experience With The Public Made It Even Harder.

We Don't Have Politicians With Dignity And Morals. We Never Have, Not Since [nelson] Mandela And [mahatma ] Gandhi. It's Really Rare.

An Artist Should Not Fall In Love With Another Artist.

Falling In Love

When I Did "seven Easy Pieces," I Actually Re-performed The Performances Of Other Artists. It Was Such Difficult Work Because I Had To Really Go Through The Documentation, Look Through The Sources, To Ask The Witnesses Who Saw It.

When I Was Young, I Couldn't Think About Ballet Because I Had To Focus On My Own Field. But Once You Secure Your Own Performance Area, You Can Indulge Yourself In Different Territories. Fashion Is One. And Ballet Is Absolutely A Fantasy, Because It Deals With The Bodies In A Different Way.

I'm Interested In Utopian Communities Of The Past. Many Of Them Didn't Survive And I'm Examining Closely The Reasons They Failed.

The Most Revolutionary Ideas Are Not Sellable, But Only Mind-changing.

If We Consider Art As Oxygen In Our Society, We Have To Deliver This Oxygen.

I Am Obsessive Always, Even As A Child. On One Side Is This Strict Orthodox Religion, On The Other Is Communism, And I Am This Little Girl Pulled Between The Two. It Makes Me Who I Am. It Turns Me Into The Kind Of Person That Freud Would Have A Field Day With, For Sure.

My Grandmother, When She Looked At American Movies, She Said, 'they're All The Same. In The First Scene Somebody Shoots Somebody And Then Everybody Makes Phone Calls.'

From The Very Early Stage When I Started Doing Performance Art In The '70s, The General Attitude - Not Just Me, But Also My Colleagues - Was That There Should Not Be Any Documentation, That The Performance Itself Is Artwork And There Should Be No Documentation.

If You See A Renaissance Body, This Is Completely Ugly In This Time. Everybody Has To Be Skinny. But The Renaissance Body With Incredible Flow Of The Meat Everywhere, It Was Beauty.

You Know How You Feel Somebody Looking At You, And You Turn, And Somebody Actually Is? It's The Same At An Art Gallery. You're Looking At One Portrait, Turn Around, And There Is A Work Of Art Directly Behind You. Because It's All Energy. Every Single Thing Has Energy.

I Am Not A Therapist. I Am Not A Spiritual Leader. These Elements Are In The Art: It Is Therapeutic, Spiritual, Social And Political - Everything. It Has Many Layers. But Art Has To Have Many Layers. If It Doesn't, Then Forget It.

You Can't Choreograph Death, But You Can Choreograph Your Funeral.

I Think Communication Starts When Words Are Not Present At All ... I Think We Put So Much Emphasis On Language, Actually Silence Is So Much More Important.

If You Have To Do Durational Work, You Have To Train! No Bullshit. You Can't Do It For Three Months. You Can Do It For Five Hours, 10 Hours, And Then You Have Three Months Rest. If This Is Your Job, You Have To Be Flexible.

Woody Allen Has A Wonderful Line: 'today I'm A Star. What Will I Be Tomorrow? A Black Hole?' That's Very Important To Know - That You Have The Moment, Then You Lose The Moment. You Have To See Your Chances, You Have To Take Them, And You Also Have To See When You Don't Have Chances To Take.

There Are Two Kinds Of Loss Of Hope, One Is The Feeling When Your Pulse Slows Down And You Are Going To Die, And There's Nothing Else Left. The Other Loss Of Hope Is When You're Living In A Country Which Becomes Insecure, And You Don't Know What The Future Is. That's Existential.

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