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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.

-Marina Abramovic

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There Has Been Evolution

Marina Abramovic

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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.

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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.

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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.

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.

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.'

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

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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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.

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

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

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

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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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.

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

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

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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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 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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Television Is Completely Another Medium.

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

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.

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Americans Don't Like European Movies.

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

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.

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

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.

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

Galás Is A Great Artist With A Very Powerful Voice.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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