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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.

-Marina Abramovic

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There Are So Many

Marina Abramovic

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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.

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

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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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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.

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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.

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We Make Such Terrible Mistakes With Visual Choices About Beauty.

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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.

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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.

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But What Is Art Other Than Revealing Human Nature?

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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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.

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

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.

Galás Is A Great Artist With A Very Powerful Voice.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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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.

A Powerful Performance Will Transform Everyone In The Room.

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

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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.

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.

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

A Great Artist Has To Be Ready To Fail.

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

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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.

Happiness Comes From The Full Understanding Of Your Own Being.

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

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

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

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

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

Television Is Completely Another Medium.

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.

Americans Don't Like European Movies.

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

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.

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