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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.'

-Marina Abramovic

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My Grandmother, When She

Marina Abramovic

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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.'

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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.'

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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.

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I Want To Dominate The Man's World.

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.

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

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.

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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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Television Is Completely Another Medium.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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