Marina Abramović is a pioneer in the field of performance art, using her body as both the subject and the medium. Today, we return to our special conversation with the legendary performer from her New York City apartment. To follow along with the works discussed, visit our guided, virtual exhibit at talkeasypod.com/marina-abramovic.
We start with her healing installation in Ukraine (7:45), creating art out of hardship (12:24), a Rainer Rilke poem that shaped her childhood (15:23), and the curiosity that propels her forward (23:42) in the face of sexist attacks from the press (28:59).
On the back-half, Marina reflects on her groundbreaking work in Rhythm 0 (33:39), her tolerance for pain (38:39), the deep-seated influence of her mother (39:47), finding happiness at age 75 (45:20), how her seminal piece, The Artist Is Present, lives on (47:56), and what it means to be still, together (52:30).
For thoughts, reflections, and guest suggestions, drop me a line at sf@talkeasypod.com.
Pushkin.
This is talk easy. I'm student Fragoso. Welcome to the show. Today we return to our very special conversation with artist Marina Abramovic. She's currently the subject of a show at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, making her the first female artist to host a major solo exhibition at the two hundred and fifty five year old institution. Recognition is long overdue. As a pioneer in performance art, which she began creating back in the nineteen seventies. Throughout her career, she's often tested her own physical limits in ways we haven't seen in public spaces before or since. And yet perhaps her most daring performance, the one that you probably know her from, is her most sedentary and the artist is present. From two thousand and nine, Marina sits silently at a wooden table in which a queue of people, one by one, sit across from her in a chair waiting to be occupied. Over the course of nearly three months, for eight hours a day inside the MoMA Atrium in New York City, she met the gaze of over a thousand strangers, many of whom were moved to tears in her presence. The piece would Garner Marina international recognition catapulting performance art into a larger cultural conversation, a conversation that continues here today on our show has both Marina and I discuss her five decades of groundbreaking work and how she continues to create art out of hardship at the age of seventy six. I sat down with her last year inside her New York City apartment, and to help illustrate exactly what we're talking about, we've put together a virtual exhibit displaying some of the pieces discussed in this conversation. If you'd like to follow along as you listen, you can visit our website at talk easypod dot com. That's talk easypod dot com. We've also included a link in the description of this episode. We'll be back next Sunday with a new episode with a guest that we have long wanted to have on this show. Until then, here's my talk with artist Marina Abramovich.
I hope you enjoy it.
You know why the people don't like to people get into their partners because they don't like to reveal anything about themselves. But I don't have secrets. I have no secrets, which is so incredibly relaxing.
May be the first person to ever come on the show with no secrets.
You know, when I do things, I am here with you. I'm notwhere else.
That's how I do the show. Yeah, Marina, thank you for having me in your apartment. This is very unusual, especially in pandemic times.
I think I totally ignore pandemic times. Looks to me, I don't know. I work more than ever, I travel more than ever. I'm really lucky. I never got sick. I got all vaccinations boosters. Not everybody else, but to me, the pandemic time. Okay, sorry, what's that?
Is it?
You?
The bell rang? Marina walked to the door. Now she returns.
They aren't know within there, they're kind of mixing the door. Okay, So my pandemic time is incredibly creative. For an artist's solitude is so important. In these two years, there was plenty of solitude. Also for me, nature was very important. I developed this exercise that to go to nature and look the tree you really like, and hug the tree and complain beIN minimum fifteen minutes. And I'd done this in England, and people really start complaining much longer than fifteen minutes. So much to complain. In England, they start crying, start pouring the heart out and talk about their lives. I really understood how much nature can heal.
Well, we're gonna do a whole show with very little complaints. We're not gonna complain too much.
I'm not complaining. Type actually very positive, you know. To me, when I see something very try, something very difficult, this is happening. It's always reason behind to really understand why things are happening, is not happening. I love this saying of Sufi's I think it's a roomy he say the wars is the best and why because then when it comes to the bottom of things, then somehow the gravitation force pulls you up after every rainy days of the sun.
How are you grappling with what's happening in Russia and Ukraine.
I was just reflecting on this whole thing.
You know.
First of all, I've just been there, so my relation to this is really like something's happening to my family and it's devastating, and I've just been in a ki of walking on the streets and seeing the buildings be demolished and had the suffering and the people in the subways and no food and electricity, no water. I feel almost guilty, how lucky I am here. I'm here in America and I just, you know, go to the bathroom and I had a hot shower anytime I want. And then also the question, but what you can do in this situation, how you can help? I also have the same questions when I was worn in my country in Zeugoslavia, and then I realized the only thing I can do is do my work as fast as I can and give the message through art. In that time in Yugoslav War, I create a space Balkan Baroque which I washed the bones repeatedly for five days in a thirty degree celsius, when the worms was coming out of the meat and blood was everywhere. And the message was that you never can wash the blood from your own hands. And that image is looking very apocalyptic, you know, me sitting on the file of two thousand and five hundred bonds and try to wash them without any result.
Other than nineteen ninety seven.
Yeah, exactly. But the part of this more important was it was for that moment rather than my country. But that image. I also want to be transcendental. I want to be that image that we can use over and over again wherever war is. Somewhere is Ukrainia just before this war started, the last only a few months ago. I've been several times in Ukrainia because I was invited to build monuments for Babyar. Babyar. It's one of the very dark part of history of the Second World War. In nineteen forty three, one hundred thirty thousand Jewish people, gay people and the Gypsies being killed in three days, strip naked and killed on the hill and throw into the mass grave. And then after that it was just put the concrete over this ault thing and became the park. And this park stays through the Nazi period, Ukrainian period, and Russian came and Ukrainia came back into doing the dependency and never been any kind of memory about that event. And some Holocaust people who still survives, people who remember this sulting and never had any point that they can actually moan or they can you know, sit in silence flight on this event. Till Zelenski, the president came and Brazilenski is Jewish and he felt his duty as the first thing actually to create the park of the memory about Babyar and he wired some artists and I make the proposal, and my proposal was accepted, and I was very touched and really full responsibility of what I'm going to do there. So I was thinking, how I can conceptually prolong this wall of prayer in Jerusalem all the way to the Ukraina into the wall of crying, healing and forgiveness. And I came with this idea of forty meter very big wall, enormous autonomy toms actually to construct free standing wall in this park. And the wall was made from the call Black coll who is actually came out of Ukraina. And then I ordered two hundred and fifty pure crystals from the middle of the mines in Brazil, and I positioned them in three places in an exactly position of the had hearted stomach, with the different sizes of different size of people, including the children. And the instruction of that wall was that you go in there, face the wall and press three points of your body against the crystals and close your eyes and just contemplate, remember and also get healing from crystals that historically had been possible. And it was incredible to see forty people standing against the wall. And when it was the opening of this old BBR event. For the opening, keme Zelenski came the President of Germany and the President of Israel. And these three presidents never faced the wall in their life. They always faced the audience. And I asked them actually to face the wall, and they did. And this was a very historical moment.
You know.
The idea of that monument is there for healing. And before the attack of Russia, there was alway so many rumors in Ukrainia the WORL would start frequenty to be used more and more and more. And I hope there was still after this hell finished. One day, I hope the world be still there.
Something you said early on, you and I sitting here in this beautiful apartment in New York, you feel some kind of guilt that you're here and your friends are in Ukraine. How much of your work do you think comes from a place of guilt.
I don't think much, actually, if I think really seriously, lots of work come out of missing love, out of loneliness, broken heart, unhappiness, some kind of big drama.
You know.
I always think that generally, if you look history of art, there's not too many art come from happiness. You need some kind of push into something that is different than your trunk will life. And always my old theory that you know, if your childhood, you have great childhood, it's difficult to become good artists because you have to difficult childhood, because there's so much work to do to work with. And I'm always you know, I take my body as a center of the work, like you know, pushing mental physical limits. But also the body is universe, and nobody knows even how our brain works. We think that we have thirty percent working, but actually scientists just develop the theory that we only have twenty percent work.
Some people seem to have less than twenty percent.
I'm sure. But the thing is that, you know, if I take my body's universe is endless exploration, endless expiration. And to me, in my early period of work, it was really kind of pushing these physical limits. And now I'm so much more interesting in the brain and mental limits, which is so much harder. But I think the work if you come just about guilt, I don't think that's interested. I think it is so much more important to kind of expand consciousness and see things in a kind of big view. I always love this big view. I don't know. I have story that everybody should go to the Museum of Natural Art History here in New York, and there is this conservatory and actually this is for children mostly, And then you go there and it was lying on these very comfortable chairs and then all swear open and there is a universe. And then you see a milky way and a tiny little shiny dot the pointed with the lasers say and this is Earth. And then comes this voice like George Clooney, whoever has said this is a planets And we look this, this tiny little blue tea and on this tiny little blue tinge. How many shit is happening? And how much we don't care about these little blorers. It's terrible. So I always try to have this view from the plane, you know, on the old thing, and to see this in the context of the planet, in the cosmic black holes universe. When I was child, my big question was always what is behind on the cosm? Where are we now?
There's a piece of poetry that you discover in your childhood that I think informs the artist at present. It comes from Rioka. It goes Earth. Isn't this what you want to arise within us? Invisible. Isn't it your dream to be wholly invisible someday? Or Earth invisible? What if not? Transformation is your urgent command.
This is so incredible. You see, Rica is my big, big love. And this is related to the Great Wall. That I walk together with Ulai, each of us to a half thousand kilometer to come to the middle and say goodbye. One of the reasons we wanted to do this because NASA report was also that only visible construction human made on our planet can be seen from the moon from out of space. It's the Pyramids and Great Wall of China. So before us, before subtleites, before anything. The second century poet and he said Earth is small and blue, and I'm just a little crack in it. Confession of the Great Wall of China. I mean, how you explained this complete astral vision of somebody looking from up into the earth in the second century.
This idea of transformation, This is recurring throughout your work. The artist is present is being represented by a video installation in this upcoming exhibition for people who may remember this piece, for those who don't know about it, how do you think about this performance?
Now?
You see this is twelve years later and one of the reasons why I want to show to actually this piece now in a gallery after twelve years is really that I have very large young audience. My generation is not kind of my audience, and so many of them have never had opportunity to see this work. This huge opportunity to actually recause constructed. But also what is happening in this piece. It's that I documented lifetime exactly, which is insane. We are talking seven hundred and sixteen hours of the documentation. I was thinking how I can present this. I was very conscious about recording this historical event, even if you're never going to sit there and look seventy six hours, but your mind, you know, that's real time, real labor which I put in, and it's no fake. I never stand up, I never drink the water, I never moved, So it's just to be there, present for this period of time. So what we had there, we had one camera who filmed all situations, which is a two chairs and table two months and later on tables removed it just two chairs, and then we filmed you on one side me first months in blue color because dress was blue, second months in red and need more energy, and the two months purification white color, so that each this square, which is actually filmed on my face, it's actually eight hours multiplied by three months. The only time that is ten hours is every Tuesday when museum is open ten hours, so it's really created as a diary. On another side, you have people. Every single square is amount of people who see that day. Some of them sit five minutes, twenty thirty. I have the guy who sit the entire seven hours. I have the same man sit twenty one time in the different periods. I have people returning, coming back, and so on. So the second screen on the opposite is like pust sitting up and down, up and down, up and down, and in the middle you have original two chairs and the table, so it's real time. You go into kind of time capsule to see this piece, and then it's very important. Another thing about this installation the photography. In the seventies, when you record performance art, the photographer never been told what to do, because also performers sometimes is very impulsive or is very improvised, so you never know what's going to happen. And then sometimes it's fifteen minutes, one hour, two hours, so the photographer come take some shots, go smoke a cigarette, come back, take another shot. So what you see it's not really exact what happened there, and also is influenced by the vision of photographer what he see and not what actually see the performer after seeing documentation. And here I have Mark Connelly, who I asked to photograph every single person, which means that this is a first photographer is in history to be there exact amount of time like me, with exact same conditions. He could go to the talls, you could not do eat. You have to be there to photograph every single person, and so most of the people who sit there and cry. And the Mark Connelly told me that he will actually photograph different sequences, but we also will make the point waiting that the tear reach the cheek and the light just kind of hit that point that is glowing. Wow. As the photographer, we just actually published the book. It's just incredible.
For seven hundred and sixty and a half hours, you're sitting motionless in the moment atrium. Again, this is eight hours a day, every day, ten hours on Fridays for three months. I have a question. We'll come back to some of this later, but I have a question you and I just sitting here now. You're an extremely excitable, animated person that wants to go from here to here in conversation and offering tea, and you've given me cookies and je Japanese and all these treats. And I sense a kind of restlessness. Even in the pandemic. You are creating endlessly in the work. When you're sitting there for three months, did it calm you in some way? You know, I don't need to be calm. I am exciting. I love things, I love to explore. I'm curious. I love to see every moment the world like a child, just you know, born.
This is so important.
This.
I feel that life in every pore of my body. And the work in the performance, work is something else. You enter to another type of yourself, You enter in your super self. How I can say it's a transition. You know, you create the concept and then you executed this concept, and that's not a life, but is life also because three months doing this thing become life, become my life because it was nothing.
Else, because there's no division, not at that point, between art and your life.
And then when you when I came back out of the performance, I made a big party. I went to the countryside with the twelve friends and we had a blust. We had a love and we had a humor, and we have ice cream and we have fun.
You know.
This is the thing, you know, it's it's not contradictional. I have so many different people in me, and all of them have a kind of equal presence and each one to function what the concept needs, you know. So I do nothing regularly, you know, like people say, oh, my meditate every day. No I'm not. But there is a time that I'm just wake up and I'm lazy, and laziness is fine too. And then I have some ideas and are really shitty, so I'm thinking and love about them and I'm not doing it. And then I have an idea, idea. Well I'm so obsessed by it and I'm so afraid. It's a hell I have to do that, Like artist is present. There was a hell of an idea. But it was also opportunity to show the transformative power of performance art by doing absolutely nothing. That was incredible, but it was every day could be the last, how have you? And difficult was but that was my chance to do that. In a setting of the MoMA Art sum and put performance right from no mainstream art into mainstream. And to me, I was sixty five when I done MoMA. I could never do this when I was twenty five, for simple reason I didn't have this willpower. I didn't have the wisdom. I could don't concentration and any of this. Sixty five was right time, and I do it. I mean now I am next year, seventy six and I'm playing very big performances in all Academy and I just done you know, oput which I'm directing and playing myself. But not so difficult, you know. But I want to say, it's so interesting to explore new territories to see what's happening. This is not wrestless us. This is curiosity, and.
I love your curiosity. In nineteen seventy six, you spoke on the role of the artist. You said, you have to realize that it is the decision of the artists to use their body through which it becomes an instrument, and you only have to look at the message it carries. You have qualms just like most other people. That is an ethical matter, but the artist has nothing to do with the morality. Once you go over that limit, the matter is about other things. Do you still belie leave that in twenty twenty two that the artist has nothing to do with morality?
But you know, I just want to also say that taking back all the artists work, we are talking about performances, We're talking about fluxus and happening, we are talking about foot tourists, we are talking about that day is we I mean, just name it all historical things. It would never happen now because of this the situation how everything is judged.
What does that mean?
Look now, political correctness today, like you're accused of everything you say, every comment, you can't tell the jogs, you can't say nothing. Is so difficult, and the freedom of artists to be free and say whatever he wants is taken away. So the work that I've been doing in that period will never be possible now, absolutely not. They will be judged in a totally different way that and it's nothing to do with art at all. So this is what I'm really fed up with political correctness. I love telling drugs. I can't tell any drug anyway, or because I can't tell jogs about Mexicos, I can tell you about Jewish, I can tell drug The only thing I can tell about more Tenegro people are my own, but everything else I have a great Jewish jock. Actually I can tell. So the two Jewish guys mates on the street, and one Jewish guy said, okay, can you tell me just in one word how you feel? And the guys say good, okay, if you need the two words to tell me how you feel, he said, not good, it's so stupid. I love it. It's just simple and nobody got hurt.
Okay, Oh, let's stick on this for one moment before we go back. This is something I hear about often that political correctness cancel culture. It's getting in the way of true artistic expression. But what has it done to your work? Has it in any way prohibited you from making something you wanted to make? No? Haven't you made everything you've wanted.
It's true because I don't give a shit about it. This is why I don't. I really don't, and I take my freedom.
You know.
I've been criticized so much constantly when I was in ex Zigoslavia doing my early performances. One now in every art history book it was terrible ticks about them that I should be put in mental hospital. And that is not art, that this is this is shame and so on, and this go on forever. And then I was the poor artist where everybody liked to be discovered. Then I was discovered. Then in MoMA, I was celebrated. Then they start, you know, telling me how I'm celebrity now and this is not art. Then they'm using the fashion clause because I get fashion clothes from the friends. Then I am become this conspiracy theory, which is another shit. You know that I'm at least they before they told me I am Satanic priests. Now they actually they upgrade me into the high priests.
I mean, this go on and on and on, and by the way, I'm really looking forward to the Satanic parties you invited me to.
You know, I have whatever you do, you know, and I'm targeted and I can't change that. All what I can do is do my work the best as I can, as I've always been doing, regardless of the opinions, and opinions constantly up and down, up and down. You know, the more you're exposed and the more you're into the world, the more you have hate and love. Nobody is ever indifferent about my work or they hate me or they love me. It's how it's supposed to be. I'm not not complaining, just just noticing.
But sometimes the criticisms bother you.
I hate lies. If I do my work and I give one hundred and fifty percent what I'm doing, and I give every atom of my energy to the work, I'm okay with this because I can't do more. And whatever you tell me is good or not, I can't change it. But if I don't do this hundred fifty percent, I have the worst judge to myself. I get sick and I don't go out of the street. I really know I didn't do my best. But when they're telling me that I am traffic in children and I am satanists, this is incredibly hurtful because it's total lie and absolutely manage my function of an artist in my message. That is something that I can't take. Wait, can I tell something more about I need to get you something.
You can give me something?
No, no, something no.
I want to talk about this, Okay.
Marina is in the kitchen grabbing what looks to be a newspaper.
Differently than the male artist. It's kind of interesting.
I just want this. This is the.
Guardian last week it's a very big article Guardian. Okay, that you know?
To me?
I also like to talk about how does somebody manager in me? Recently? And they told me if you are the only female artists have that kind of public image like I have away like Jeff Consle that me and Hurst not that the other female artists have. I didn't think that way, but then I'm thinking, yes, if I have that kind of what kind of image I have? I'm talking just especially about the two Guardians articles recently. One was about my show in October last year in Listen Gallery, and then oother one you know last week about publishing on my cards of Abram Which method you know? I didn't know that when you write the article, the titles, what articles are made from the different organization. So I had both articles very well written by the people who are the artistorian and they're good, but the titles are incredibly discouraging, diminishing and vulgar.
They're designed for people to click on it, and that subtly bothers me.
And this you don't have with the male artists. You have just with me. Who is the only public one here? I mean, okay, this is one just now you know the one in October was Marina Bramwich Have a Young Lover, Dirty Jokes and mystical Crystals. That was the worst kind of summary what my fifty years of my career is. So now I'm publishing this the cards who have been really well reviews everywhere, and now the cover of the issue in The Guardian is culture for her next tricks Marina Bramwich Artists, Provocateur, self help Guru is the most ugly titles I can possibly imagine, and I have to live with that. And when you read the article, this doesn't actually reflect the title at all. And why you think, my question to you, is this happening?
I think there's two reasons why. One, people are reading less and less, and publications across the globe have to continue to write headlines that are intentionally provocative to get eyeballs, to get people to click so that advertisers keep coming back. That's the financial part of it, and that's true. The second part is probably what you're saying, which is you're a woman in the public eye and most of these articles, even when the articles are written by women, the headlines are written by men, so there's clear sexism too.
But you know it's one thing to take this when you're in the beginning of your career or the video career, but when you're really seventy five, it still lies act of your life. You know, how long it going to live till eighteen ninety whatever. I hope on hundred three as my grandmother. But I just kind of have enough that my work finally should have the kind of weight and understanding which is more profound than these titles.
Well, I agree with you, So whant tot we take a break and when we come back, we'll dive into the work. Coming back. You talk about at this point in your life wanting people to understand the work that you've made. Why don't we try to do that. Let's start with Rhythm zero, which you performed in nineteen seventy four in Naples. Explain to people what exactly you did here.
You know, by that time I was already doing my performance work. Performance artists in those days was heavily criticized as masochist, as sadis, this is exhibitionism, that's not art at all, and so on and so on, and I become very angry and very fatal in that time. When you're young and they say Okay, let me see if I do something and see what will happen if I put seventy two objects on the table which have the objects for pleasure and objects for pain and torture, including pistol with one bullet, and also the simple structure that you can use everything on the table as you want pleasure pain, including killing me in six hours. And I take all responsibility. And I'm standing dress in black shirt and black jeans in the front of this table. Wow, that was kind of pretty bald to do that. But I was ready to die. There was no question about it.
You are ready to die.
I was ready to die for art. You know, there is a wonderful set. The quotation of Bruce Nauman, he said, you know, the art is a matter of life and death. Maybe sounds malodramatic, but it's also very true. This is how I took everything in my life as matter of life, and that this is why my work is so important to me. My work is everything I have. I pour my heart into it and every single work, and it's true and it's vulnerable. And this is why young generation can react to me that way because they understand it's not bullshit. Is understand that they have intuitions, they have sense that I'm not playing anything. What I'm doing and what they see is.
What it is. This is a matter of life and death. It's my understanding that a man placed a bullet in the pistol of one of your performances.
In that performance. Particularly so for this perform there was normal gallery. People came from normal opening, not expecting anything. They came with the wives that came. So and the six hours we are talking, you know, from the evening till two in the morning, and they have were not expecting anything like that, me standing there in the front of them, completely looking one point fix and the all this possibility. So the first three hours they've been playing, they will give me the flowers, they will fit me with a piece of cake, you know, all kinds of things that was available on the table for pleasure and playing. But I took six hours. I give them time to actually develop dark side of themselves and then start playing. They cut me on my neck, drink my blood. They put the cotton around my shoulders, tried to burn. They put the water over me. They carry me around, spread their legs and put the knife on the table between my legs. They done all of these things. Still the one came with a pistol. Put the bullet, put on my forehead. Somebody start fighting. They throw the pistol away. There was all this incredible attention. Everything with Italians done to me. If you see the photographs, is a reflection of three things, poor Madonna mother, three possibilities. The women would tell men what to do, and they would take my tears on my eyes. They would not do anything, and they cut my clothes. They exposed my breast. When the one give me the rose, other one takes the needles of the rose and step into my breasts. I was standing there and I absolutelyn' react if they put my hand up and live that way. If they moved me, I had no reaction at all, like a puppet. And this went on and on and onth The only they didn't rape me because they was there with the wives. But I could go in any direction. And after six hours I was really naked, full of blood, wet hair falling upon it was horrible. The galleries came to me and whisper my ear. Six hours is finished, and I start moving towards them. To the public. The whole run away, literally they run away. They could not face me as me and then I came to the hotel, I look myself in the mirror and a piece of gray hair in my hair.
After that performance, you just described gray hair. With the gray hair, What did it tell you about people?
It was very important because actually two performances was very important to me. The iteth of zero and many many years later, artists is present because of the same reason relation to public, because in the first one, I really pushed the dark side and I understand in that process that public can kill you. When I understood that, I didn't want to deal with that part anymore. Then artists is present. I restrict everything except I gaze, not touching and now talking just condition is city and I guess there I left human spirit because I knew the key how to do that. That was the moment that actually the only they can do is to go into themselves. But I need all these years in between to get that.
Twice thirty six years between the two. Throughout your career, you've created performances around self infliction. You have razor blades, the stomachs and lips of Thomas, a bed of fire, and rhythm five taking pills for schizophrenia and rhythm two.
Oh my god, sounds so terrible.
But this performance in rhythm zero is different, like you said, because others are causing the pain. And I wonder how much you're drawing from your experience is growing up in post war Yugoslavia. Here's a passage from your memoir. When I was small, when my mother and sister would slap me, I got blue bruises all over. My nose would bleed constantly. Then when I lost my first baby tooth, the bleeding didn't stop for three months. I had to sleep sitting up in bed so I wouldn't choke. Finally, my parents took me the doctors to see what was wrong with me. At first they thought it was leukemia. My mother and father put me in the hospital. I was there for almost a year. I was six. This was the happiest time of my childhood.
That's true. I'm so so dramatic. Now I look with total optimism and enthusiasm about this all hell I went through because I make me stronger. And I also understood this intention of my mother, because you know in this diaries, I'm talking about her not ever kiss me or tell me I love you or something like that. And I never understood that coldness and the really suffered as a childhood. So much for that. But then when she died, I find her diaries and I read this diarist. And if I read one page of this diary during her lifetime, my relation to my mother would be very different. Why is that? Because she was emotionless, suffering father, being totally unfaithful all the time. You know, I have to have her career, two children to take care, and it was so hard. And I understand in her mind, the only way to make me strong is to make me worry and cut me from all the emotional bullshit. That's how she saw it. But I didn't know that. I only knew this ash that died and then I really forgive this all thing. So I'm looking this like just experience, but also the later on the things that I done to my body. It's not reason because I wanted to suffer or I want to I am interested in pain. It was much more related to the shamanism, to the rituals of different cultures. All of them deal with the facing the pain of the body and understanding the pain of the body and actually liberate themselves from the fear of the pain, and I just staged these things in front of the public goes through this, and if I can do to myself and do this, the public can also get treat of their fear of the pain, because pain is something that you can open the door. Pain keeps the secrets. It's kind of complicated to explain all that, but in a way, you know right now, I mean, do I look too sick to look you, you know, unhealthy or I'm something disturbed? No, I actually pretty free because I understood the structure and this was, you know, one of the reasons how to enlarge your consciousness. I get to read of fears that you have basic fear of pain, of dying, of suffering, and I had plenty in my life and took me fifty years to work this out.
Do you wish you could have forgave your mother or mended your relationship before she passed away.
Yeah, very much so. As I said, if I just read one page's diary, it would be different. And I'm so sorry I never did. My mother was national hero that I didn't know either till I found actually the article and medals in the little box under her bed, because she never talked about the war. And my father always talked about the war. He was also a hero. Different story, and she never talked, and she always have the light in her bedroom on. And I was always thinking because she's afraid of dark. And I don't think she was afraid of dark. She was pretty much have the guts and that was amazing story. They want to know the story how she got a hero.
I know the story, but I would love for you to tell her.
So she.
Was the commander of the Red Cross. She was like I don't know, twenty seven to uage on the front lines, picking up wounded soldiers to bring them safety to the hospital. And there was occupation of Belgrade, and she have a truck with the six nurses driver and she picked up on the streets of Belgrade soldiers forty six of them put inside the car and was driving to get out of Belgrade to the hospital which was not occupied. And in the process the driver got killed and she had to remove all the soldiers with the six nurses to the sidewalk and the truck start getting fire, and she ran into the fire truck and take the land phone that she can fold the hospital to send another truck. In meantime, four nurses got killed, so she's now with two nurses, and her new truck came got all the soldiers back to the new truck. Forty six of them saved their life. Not bad, not bad, not at all.
I keep thinking about her because throughout your memoir you reference your relationship with her, especially in relation to how you loved. You're right. When I think back on all that happened between Ulay and me and Paolo and me, I often wonder what I contributed to each split. And I can't help believing that the need to be loved and taken care of that my mother never satisfied was a hurt I brought to every man I was ever with, and something that they couldn't fix. You're seventy five, now, how do you think about those loves today?
Oh?
God, you know I don't take it more because in the past and each of them I suffer and love with Paul already broke my heart. And this is the reason why I've done all this, you know, the seven deaths Mariacanas, because in her life, you know, on US's broke her heart. She die and for me, my work saved me from that dying. But I want to do something in memory of her. But finally, and right now, this is five years I mean relationship. Who's like, wow, I can't believe this is really happening. I've always believed the second shoes fall down and something will terrible happen because it's based on trust and love and happiness and incredibly peacefulness, and it is so unknown territory for me, and it's working citing all the understanding and all mistakes and the kind of knowledge I get from the old failed relationships kind of pour into this one that actually I think I'm more happy in my life than ever been. And it's like very un known territory to work in.
In fact, it's the exact opposite of territory we started with.
Absolutely it takes long time. But also age is not bad at all, because you know, if you're old and sick, that really sucks, but when you're old and happy. Ad vice. I never want to go back when I was twenty thirty, forty.
It was too hard work, so it's okay. So basically I want to get this right. You said in the beginning of this conversation, if you had a happy childhood, it's going to be pretty hard for you. As an artist. Yeah, but if you're a happy adult at seventy five, does that work?
Oh? Yes, works because you have all this knowledge that you didn't have when you're twenty five, and that knowledge counts lot. Honestly, this is like for me the last part of my life, and it's so full of optimism and hope and happiness and always I said the same thing, always about dying. All what I'm worrying about is to die without fear, consciously and without anger. And if I succeed this, I done well in this life. Because you know, as again Sophie said, life is a dream and that is waking up.
You said your last performance piece will be your death.
Not really that funeral because that you know, we don't know. But the funeral, yes, organized funeral.
What is this project?
I just wanted to have happy ending. It's so important to have happy ending, you know, of one fulfilled life. And I really feel that I'm very lucky that my life is very fulfilled with so much events, good, bad, difficult together all of them just is kind of wonderful. That act of dying, you can't predict when. But the funeral, I don't know. Want anybody organized for me I like be organized myself to be celebration, dirty jobs, lots of music, nobody wear black, lots of food, and really remember all of the happy moments, good music. You see, it looks like that is knocking on the outdoor or something.
It does sound like that does knocking on the door. I mean it means we have to wrap up.
It looks like this is such a wonderful conversation and you hardly eat any cookie.
I'm gonna eat some cookies. I have two things for you. We started with the artist as present. I want to go to one day after two months of performing, when a man in a wheelchair arrives at the front of the line. The guards removed the other chair and put him in his wheelchair across the table from you, And you said, I looked at this man, and I realized that I didn't even know if he had legs. The table was in the way. What happened that night when you went home?
Then I realized that I actually don't need a table. That is some kind of social structure that I constructed from the beginning, but I could not know there before because this art is such a huge space, and if I just had the two chairs I felt it was very little because it's already so minimal, you know. I put the table there, and this is the fear generally of very young artists when they think they need to put lots of stuff. And I literally own my career removing more. But now I was only two chairs a table. I think, okay, this is pretty minimal. But then when this man came and I realized I don't know if you have legs or not, I understood I don't need this table either, and this was incredibly important realization. Then when I came to mom the next day, the security manager told me that it's not possible that it's buffer between me and audience, that you have to have it. I say, yes, but this isn't my decision, and I removed the table. At that everything changed. I was dressed in white, and all energy was like so dense, and relation was so intense. But I was ready for that intense relation because I already sit there two months before. So this is the process that you can't actually speed it up, have to go slowly till you realize that you don't need anything.
This is the only time that you've made a major change in the middle of a piece right.
Yes, only time, but that was totally necessary. And minimality of this piece, you know, because it's minimal, is so immaterial already. And that was the piece who changed my life?
Why did it change your life?
Yeah, because I realized that actually I have to work with audience. Then my work is people. That's my work, and the people have to also do the world themselves. This is why create a brand, which method? This is my creat institute. It's all new function.
Removing the table from that performance, it reminded you of an Indian folk tale. But the coffin, can you share that with people?
This king who buried the very beautiful princess in the world in the fall in love and there was the most happy kingdom in the world, and she could become pregnant and delivered the child. She died or she became sick and she died one of one other story and I don't remember exactly. And he was so devastated about his dad that he put her in the simple wooden coffin and looked this coffin and then he covered the coffin with the emeralds, sapphires in gold and was not enough. And around this coffin, he created another one, and then little temple, and the temple was not enough, and make a bigger temple. And then he start growing, growing this huge kind of memorial about this he beloved princess, that actually the entire kingdom became the temple of her. And then he was looking there and it's nothing else to do, and he look and look and look and start saying to the builders, destroy the big temple, destroy the small temple. Destroyed, this destroyed, and everything was left. It was just this coffin with the emeralds and jewors. And then he say, okay, now remove all the jewors, and there was only this simple wooden coffin there again. And then he look the coffin and he said, remove the coffin. That's the story. Teach you a lot.
The story is our lives. We do all we can to fill it with people and places and things and performances and books we love. I'm looking around at your apartment all these things, but when you die, you can't take any of this. That's nothing.
And this is why performers are the sort of incredible power of realization so many things and kind of energy that other type of art does not have, and it's so difficult to maintain because his immaterial is time based, takes everything.
From you, and yet it seems you still have more to give to late. That is that a promise?
Yes, I don't stop before we go, since I never had a chance to sit across from you during the artist is present, would you mind.
If we just sat here for a moment.
Close your eyes. I just want to say something. When you sit still and quiet, it's never stillness and quiet because there's so much space inside your body, in your organs, between liver and kidneys, between your heart and ribs and so on. There is a movement everywhere. Then all the planet is moving around the Ox, and then the planet is moving around the Sun, and the Sun and planets are moving around Milky Way, and everything is moving to another who knows where galaxy is. And to understand all this is really to be still and to understand actually stillnesses being in the moment.
Well, Marina and Bravovich, I thank you very much for sitting in this moment with me, for all that you have done and will continue to do, and for inviting me into your home. No secrets at all.
No secrets, but please promise and come to the workshop next time to do the cleaning the house, your own body house.
It seems I have some more to do. Okay, thanks for sending with me, and that's our show.
If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to leave us five stars on Apple, Spotify, wherever you do your listening. To learn more about Marina and her, visit our website at talk easypod dot com. Once there, you'll find our back catalog of over three hundred episodes, including talks with Joe Myrowitz, Kendi Wiley, Margaret Atwood, Zadi Smith, Toyen og Odetola, and Tom Hicks. To hear those and more, Pushkin Podcast listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen. You can also follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram at talk Easypod. If you want to purchase one of our mugs they Come and Cream or Navy, or our vinyl record with writer fran Lebowitz, you can do so at talk easypod dot com slash shop Talk easy is produced by Caroline Reebok. Our executive producer is Janixa Bravo. Our associate producer is Caitlin Dryden. Today's talk was edited by Clarice Gavara and Caitlin Dryden and mixed by Andrew Vastola. Our music is by Dylan Peck. Our illustrations are by Christian Shadowy, Video and graphics by Ian Chang, Derek Gaberzac, Ian Jones and Ethan Seneca. I also want to thank our team at Pushkin Industry, Justin Richmond, Julie Barton, Johnsonars, Kerrie Brody, Heather Fain, Eric Sander, Jorna mc millan, Cura Posey, Tara Machano, Jason Gambreel, Justine Lang, Malcolm Gladwell and Jacob Weisberg. I'm San Fragoso. Thank you for listening to Talk Easy. I'll see you back here next Sunday with the One and Only ze Way. Until then, stay safe and so on.