Americans don't like European movies.
— Marina Abramovic
I believe the artist has an obligation to society.
If you do performance and music, it's not performance as music.
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.
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.
Performance is there, and if you are not there in that moment it happened, it just stays in the memory. It's so immaterial and something this immaterial is very difficult to collect. Its difficult to buy, its how we can buy immaterial art.
Performance has to be mainstream art. This is what I'm fighting for.
One of the most wonderful things for me is to watch somebody else perform, where I am the audience - I love this more than ever.
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 am very clear that I am not a feminist. It puts you into a category and I don't like that.
When you have a nonverbal conversation with a total stranger, then he can't cover himself with words, he can't create a wall.
Theater is something that as a performance artist you have to hate.
The world doesn't need an artist who shows reality as it is.
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.
I am only interested in the ideas that become obsessive and make me feel uneasy. The ideas that I'm afraid of.
In my work I have complete control, but about my life, I don't want to.
I think 21st century should be art without objects.
Most of the time, the artists are not supposed to wear the fashion. It is always seen as a vanity. But I think I don't need to prove anything in my life. I can honestly say I love fashion and I can be many things at the same time.
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.'
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.
I didn't get paid for performances most of my life. If I did, I would be billionaire now, and I'm not.
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.
Every party is the same, too many people, too little food, and you have to wait around. I'm extremely bored with parties.
I really think there's no difference between an art piece made by a man and one made by a woman. Is it a good art piece or a bad art piece? Of course, if you're female, you're maybe dealing with different issues.
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.
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.
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.
I hate studio. For me, studio is a trap to overproduce and repeat yourself. It is a habit that leads to art pollution.
In theater, blood is ketchup; in performance, everything's real.
We always project into the future or reflect in the past, but we are so little in the present.
I was friends with Susan Sontag the last four years of her life. She had this amazing charisma and so much energy, but she had a sad little funeral in Montparnasse in Paris. It was rainy. It was all wrong. And I was thinking, 'God, she loved life so much.'
Because of technology, we don't develop telepathy. We don't use telepathy, but use, you know, the mobile phones. Why?
For me, performance is a holy ground. When I perform, I really step into a different state of consciousness.
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.
Happiness is such a good state, it doesn't need to be creative. You're not creative from happiness, you're just happy. You're creative when you're miserable and depressed. You find the key to transform things. Happiness does not need to transform.
Artists can do whatever they want!
Cancer is an emotional disease.
You can't choreograph death, but you can choreograph your funeral.
An artist has to look at the future, to see what we can do better.
People have so much pain inside them that they're not even aware of.
