Original subtitles

Take, take, take, take, take.

Marina, Marina, up.

Wow, this looks so beautiful.

Wow.

Everybody move around into position.

Time to start.

Brock, let's go closer to Marina.

You know what is interesting?

After 40 years of people thinking you're insane and you should be put in mental

hospital.

You finally actually get all the acknowledgement.

It takes such a long time to take it seriously.

There, right there, right there. Don't move anything.

Right there.

It's a long way.

Welcome to the arts portion of our program. Kind of the highbrow part. In

it's the Museum of Modern Art Museum that we're talking about.

Yeah, but it might raise your eyebrows is what this one might do.

In addition to being highbrow. You have to decide if it's highbrow. Now, Monica

Wallace would just see it. There are three pieces in particular that are new.

Here's the first one.

It's called In Ponderabilia by artist Marina Abramovic.

The name of the artist Marina? Marina. What was her last name?

Don't know.

Abramovic. Oh, okay. Like, you know, the Eastern European.

Marina Abramovic.

I want whatever packs you.

My mother dressed me as the devil when I was four years old for the little

party. My first party ever.

Everybody was dressed very happy.

You know, princesses and cowboys.

And I was looking so miserable.

Really, little kid with a very sad black devil dress with the two horns.

I had no idea why she dressed me as the devil.

I think that marked my life.

So we recreated the singers.

Only six years later.

I mean, after the show, I have to really put more attention to the text of my

life, so I have to really look for it. If I put advertising like that, you

that will attract some guys?

I mean, to, like, true artists on the top of their career, looking for the

single male.

So basically, you're looking in many marinas.

You look in the marina who is product of the two partisan parents, two

national heroes, no limits, willpower, any aim you put in the front of her.

And then right next to this one, you have the other one who is like a little

girl who, you know, mother never give her enough love.

very vulnerable and unbelievably disappointed and sad.

And then it's another one who have this kind of spiritual wisdom and can go

above all that.

And this is actually my favorite one.

You have to make room. Oh, he's there. Hello?

We can, we can... Okay.

Now we have to start.

Yeah, yeah. Let's go forward. Okay.

I'm going back to here. Yeah, yeah.

Here I have ten pieces of that.

Which is plenty.

Yeah, but it's whether they work.

I love your name. August is amazing.

Do you have a brother, September?

No, but who is writing the text?

That would be Klaus.

That would be Klaus.

All right.

I'll just be putting it on the wall.

Oh, that's great. I like time.

And I like Russian.

But we can try together.

Okay.

All right. It's too red.

Well, we talked about making it black and white yesterday.

Yeah. You know, there will be color, actually.

One time in my life, I would like to show everything what it takes you to

art and to be an artist. How much correspondence, how much emails, how

faxes, how much letters, how much plane tickets, how much... All the structure

is just enormous.

What is actually physical work, which is not to do with creativity, but just

administration.

Marina Branovic is office.

Hey. In MoMA, I have all six floors. Wow.

It's a big deal, I tell you. It's a big deal. I feel pain in my back already

just to think about. So it's that chronological. So this is the beginning,

know. It's the beginning of my early work. You know, this work is called

Artist's Present. So only it's... Focusing on performance where artist is

literally present. Doesn't include my transitory objects, doesn't include my

sound pieces, doesn't include my objects with crystals. Just performance, pure

performance. It's all about performance.

If we have the video, we don't show anything except video, you know. It's

radical. So for me, it's like, that's why this show in MoMA is historical for

me, important to really put the kind of things in the right place.

Because performance has never been a regular form of art. It's been an

alternative since I was born. So I want it really to be a real form of art and a

respect before I die.

So let's start with the

exhibition. You are re -performing your own performances?

You're making one new piece?

Just one new piece. The artist is present and all the rest of the people

-performing.

my um yeah and so i think your first performance was also in the

museum in in belgrade is that uh kind of no it's true but what kind of venues

and marina the element of

sound is imminent in relation in movement where you are driving a van

square for 16 hours and shouting numbers through a megaphone. You substituted

your persona with that of a prostitute.

And rhythm two, where you took psychoactive drugs to challenge social

towards female mental illness. And rhythm five, where you lay inside a

five -pointed star set on fire and then fainted from the lack of oxygen.

And now these pieces, you have often been threatened and threatened your own

body and I know you're probably sick of these questions, but I just want to

touch on it briefly before we can move on. There's only one question I didn't

hear since 10 years.

Why is this art?

This was the main question since I started performing with people asking me

I could not take it. And now actually I'm missing it. Nobody asks me why it's

not art. Because maybe it's my age. So they kind of get it finally or they just

pretend they get it. If you're...

Alternative when you're young, when you're 18 and 19 and 20 and you're still

alternative with 29 and you're alternative with the 30 and you're

with the 40 and you're alternative with the 50. But excuse me, I'm 63.

I don't want to be alternative anymore.

Many people think of her as the grandmother of performance art.

Performance emerged in the 60s as a result of a challenge to painting.

Whatever it was, it was not something you hung on the wall.

It's a form of art where

The medium is the body.

In the case of Marina, she used the human body to make statements that can

sometimes be quite violent, can sometimes be provocative.

She is directly and boldly challenging an audience.

What is at the heart of her artwork?

is the shared experience of the audience and the performer.

Many of Marina's works are interventions.

When she did Rhythm Zero in Naples with the objects and people could use the

objects against her, that is like the Stanford experiment, right? That's kind

a scientific experiment that reveals human nature.

But what is art other than revealing human nature?

It's like a murder mystery. It's like a Hitchcock. Is he going to get murdered?

There the gun is.

What's going to happen? Who's walking in? Who's walking out?

The veneer of civilization is very thin.

And what's absolutely terrifying is how quickly a group of people will become

bestial if you give them permission to do so.

And some of...

Marina's early performances were about that.

It's playing with that edge of the knife that allows her to

create the intensity of the performances that make them transcendent.

Basically, the workshop called Clean the House, and it's preparation for the

show in MoMA.

My generation of artists is not performing anymore. Maybe two or three

left. And I was thinking, is it my task to make history straight?

So when I now asked to make a perspective on the performance work in

really thinking that it would be important for me to...

let it go also from my own ego and give five historical pieces to other younger

artists to be re -performed.

So now they're coming.

I'm cooking the soup.

She said something like, we're not going to eat or speak for three days. She's

like, you'll hate me at the time, but you'll love me forever after and do

whatever I want.

She wants us to fast for three days, and she's mentioned some other

exercises that we'll be doing.

Like, I'm going with my instincts on this, and...

It feels right to trust her.

So you can make your last phone call.

Last phone call.

You know, you'll be free for three days. It's amazing.

So what's happening?

We'll let you know later. Okay, it doesn't matter.

This will be different.

They can take this experience and they do everything they want with their own

life.

But probably they'll hate me anyway.

At least in the beginning.

It's a very simple structure, you know. And the whole idea is... to slow down to

slow down with your body and your mind in the zero gravity if it's possible so

you know the first ritual will be to wake up and do some simple exercises

like a kind of you know little jumping and little bit of the energy releasing i

will show to you it's very simple and then we go to the river anybody who have

problem with nudity please take a swimming suit one bikini one side two

whatever you want or naked i don't care the purpose of this whole thing is that

they really have to perform three months, which is a very big kind of

obligation.

So they have to create their own charismatic space.

And for that, you have to consider some training.

The proposition here is to empty yourself.

Be able to be in the present time.

Put your mind here and now.

And then something emotional opens.

And that's what we are looking for in this work.

In performance, you have to have a mortal approach.

It's a kind of direct energy dialogue with the public and the performer.

And if you are performing in that way, that you are there, it is 100%.

Their emotional moment arrives to everybody.

There's no way out. Everybody feels it.

Artists have to be warriors, have to have this determination, and have to

the stamina to conquer not just new territory, but also to conquer himself

and his weaknesses.

It doesn't matter what kind of work you're doing as an artist.

The most important is from which state of mind you're doing what you're doing.

And performance is all about state of mind.

Wait and see.

Marina Abramovich, the artist at present, means.

that from March 9th to May 31st, whenever you enter the museum during

hours, it may be at 9 .30 in the morning or at 5 in the afternoon, she will be

present.

How I imagine artists present in Atrium, I actually imagine more like a kind of

film set.

There is a huge square of light.

Just a square, you know, like lost in translation in some way.

In the middle of that square, it's placed the table and two chairs.

It's so simple. It's like nothing there. If it's an artist sitting like a

mountain, you know, I want to be just like a rock there. Only three months.

And looking you in the eyes, you're talking three months.

Every single day, if you are performing three months, it's really performance

become life itself.

People don't understand that the hardest thing is to actually do something which

is part of nothing.

It's demanding all of you, because there is no story anymore to tell. There's no

object to hide behind.

There's nothing. There's just your pure presence. You have to rely on your own

energy and nothing else.

Seven and a half hours, six days a week, motionless.

I have nothing to say.

No comment.

All your respect.

I could imagine it being unbearable to sit there.

She's gonna try.

I don't know whether it's gonna work.

When she had this idea, I thought, oh God, she's gonna kill herself.

And I thought, Marina, I don't know if I want to have the responsibility of

having... given you the permission to do that.

Think about it for two days.

And then she called me the next morning. She said, I can do that.

In the moment that Klaus Wieselbach came with the title of the show, Art is

Present, it was like a destiny clicked, like right away. Art is Present.

There's no any way out.

I wanted to show you. I mean, isn't it fantastic?

No one will ever see it.

and it's nothing to do with the museum will not get flooded for sure i mean

maybe i don't use it at all i just have to i'm very much counting on you never

using it you promised no because it's like the whole idea about you know

security men don't get it so i think it doesn't want it to to deal with reality

you know i think that's fine i think that's a great solution I have no idea

I have to do harder and harder. It's like something in me. You know, I can

perfectly make a retrospective, 36 people re -performing my piece. We have

wonderful dinner, celebration, go home and work is done.

But why I have to do this? This is my cross I'm carrying. It's insane.

So God helped me to finish this one.

When you're watching a Marina Abramovich performance, you are engaging with her

physical presence, which is very striking.

The clear evidence that she has a lot of physical stamina and strength, which

the public and its presence gives her.

But clearly, physically, it's innate. She can take sitting still or doing very

little or whatever she's doing in the performance.

for long periods of time, which most people cannot.

So my both parents are national heroes from the seat of time, you know, in the

Second World War in ex -Yugoslavia.

I had such a terrible...

real control at home, which I hated.

Everything was like discipline, schedule.

I was trained to be a soldier, literally.

My mother would even wake me in the middle of the night and my bed was not

straight because I'm sleeping too messy.

I mean, that kind of insanity.

There was no love there, you know. I never remember my mother kissing me or

holding me in any possible way.

And much later in my life when I asked her, but why, you know, you never kissed

me, she was so surprised at the question. She said, of course I didn't

not to spoil you.

And it really didn't spoil me. But on the other side, it was the grandmother

was loving and always there, and she was spiritual and spending all the time in

the church.

And I was with her as a child because both of them were doing political career

and never had time for me.

So there's a kind of strange mixture between spirituality and that communist

discipline. Looking now back, it was very important to me. And actually, this

what makes me what I am now.

Welcome to Florence.

I went to this bathroom in the airport and there was a fantastic discovery.

There are two pages with illustrations how to wash the hands by water and

soap.

Today we are here for the important

Lorenzo Magnifico Award to Marina Abramovich.

Thank you.

Thank you very much. And now,

you know, I was thinking a lot to give a lecture, and I don't feel in this

occasion of getting prized to give a lecture. I would like to actually have

dialogue with the public. And before I do this, I would like to read you my

manifest.

So my manifest, I think I wrote really out of my heart and this also

is actually funny in the same time, but it's true.

An artist should not lie to himself or to others.

An artist should not steal ideas from the other artist.

An artist should not compromise for themselves or in regard to to the art

market.

An artist should not kill another human being.

An artist should not make themselves into an idol.

An artist's relation to his love life.

No, love life.

Love. Amore.

Chiedo scusa.

An artist should avoid falling in love with another artist. An artist should

avoid falling in love with another artist.

An artist should avoid falling in love with another artist.

The very first

moment we met was when she came to Amsterdam. She was to do a performance.

I met her just before and said, well, the performance was called Thomas Lips.

It came down to that she would cut a pentagon in her stomach with a razor

and she would whip herself and say, no, no, maybe not.

Afterwards, I started nursing her wound.

I didn't lick her wound, but I cared for the wound and cleaned it and, you know,

put something on it.

And I think that was the crucial point.

By the time we met, there was immediately a fascination, type -wise,

-wise, personality -wise, the work we have been doing, singly, she and me.

You know, there was a recognition like you had found a lost brother or a lost

sister or something like this.

Plus that we were born on the same day, November the 30th, both Sagittarius,

obvious.

You know, destiny brought us together.

I really loved him. I mean, loved him like more than myself.

And for me, when we started working together, it was forever.

I was thinking, this is the relationship, this is work, and it would

Like two twins connected with the body together and soul.

We were lovers, we were friends, we were performers, all at once.

And our love was always on top of it.

I think Marina and Ulay's relationship is one of the great love stories.

Marina is very hardcore and she had met someone who was equally prepared to go

to any length for his art.

And that must have impressed her enormously because she had met her

When Marina and Ulay came together and started the group of works known as the

Relation Works, there had been nothing like it in performance before.

We would engage our bodies in a confrontational way.

We wanted to get to the point about male -female conflict, traumatic experiences

about a relation.

Afterwards, often we were black and blue, but it didn't hurt.

That was as intensive and as heavy, as powerful as other people's whole life

again.

We went through so many stages, falling in love, having this relation of 12

years. Now we're talking 23 full years that we are able, first time ever, to be

under the same roof.

Well, I should be here at two the first.

Time that will lie comes in this specific apartment in New York. Never

never upstate.

They've been separated since many years, so we are getting together to talk

about it.

And I have no idea what will come out, but it will be for sure interesting, for

sure.

Hello.

How are you doing?

I'm doing fine.

She's been the psychoanalyst.

Dr. Glimor, very special lady.

Really strict.

I like strict.

I mean, she doesn't have uniform, but almost.

So she told me emotionally, I'm not doing so bad.

I should go more into my childhood, look into the patterns, not to repeat for

the next relationship.

I told her about Ulay, and she think maybe it's going to be easy, maybe not,

whole thing. You know, we don't know.

Okay, let me have a glass of water.

We both are in a third act of our life.

There's no other moment, you know, to get closer and somehow forgive each

to really kind of peacefully find, okay, it was really horrible and painful and

hateful and everything else together, but it was creative in the same time,

we should just forgive each other.

I think I still love her.

I can live with it. I'm happy I do, rather than hating her.

Yeah, I think up in the office, isn't it? Yes. And you're the one who sends

emails. David is a young artist and good one, too, from Torino.

Davide. Yeah, not Davide, Davide.

Davide.

How are you doing?

I'm doing fine. Look at me.

Totally. If I can be of help, pleasure.

If I can do something for pleasure, depends what, but, you know, speaking

yeah, of course.

I can do only two things.

Help will be good.

It's an amazing place, Davide. Are you often here, Davide?

Yes, pretty often.

Yeah, I would try to do the same.

Maybe she still loves me. I don't know.

We will figure out tomorrow something.

Tomorrow after tomorrow.

And maybe put a finger on her teeth.

Put a finger on her teeth?

Yeah, that means to make something sensitive.

Yeah.

Nina, are you nervous about the show at the moment, or are you not nervous?

Incredibly. I'm always nervous even if I give a speech.

I sit in the toilet for days.

If I'm not nervous, then I'm nervous, but I'm not nervous.

And when you're sitting in the chair, are you going to move on the chair a

little bit, leaning backwards and forwards, or are you planning on staying

the exact same position?

In the exact same position, not moving.

And just looking straight, what are you looking at like that?

Anybody who sits in front of me.

Marina seduces everybody she ever meets.

But that's not the case for me because I went through that process and now we

are divorced.

We are great friends, but we are divorced. So she would never try to

We're divorced.

With Marina, I always try to subtract the performer from the person I have a

working relationship with.

And I try to deal with her as if she was a sculptor. I look at the work as if it

was an object.

I try to be incredibly matter -of -fact with her because I don't want her

performance persona to get into the way.

Because with Marina, she's never not performing.

Marina, you don't need this?

Are you sure?

I can teach you one that you can also do. It's fun.

Yeah, you do.

I met recently somebody that so many people told me I could meet, I could

And that just happened in MoMA. And so we came here and had a little drink.

And it's quite interesting, you know, guy. He's a magician, David Blaine.

He was thinking we can maybe do something during my...

You know, there's always those axes in the glass in case of emergency, you

So I was thinking if somehow I got into using this alcohol, this substance that

she has, and gagging her face with it, and people would think it was pretty

strange, and then breaking the glass open and then taking an axe and just

gutting her.

And then there come emergency.

They put blankets over me, blood all over the place, and, you know, the

come, take him to prison. She is laying there.

And the whole exhibition is over.

And people don't know what happened. It was accident, not accident.

Questioning, you know, maybe reality is not reality.

And I'll just hack her violently.

Have you done this before?

No.

If I do it twice, it's an illusion.

But when you do it one time, it's crazy.

I mean, the amazing thing is, Maria, that it's going to be in at MoMA.

Huh? Yeah. Yeah.

Those people are the perfect people to do it to.

Absolutely. Yeah.

What do you really think?

I think it's a really bad idea.

Why? Because he's a really interesting guy, and he does amazing things.

But the fact of the matter is, you know, some people culturally call people like

that magicians, but I'm sure he would prefer to be called an illusionist.

And that really tells you all you need to know. Your work doesn't have anything

to do with illusionism. It's all real.

And to make the connection between those two bodies of work in MoMA on the

occasion of the most important show you've made to date in your career would

a disaster.

I think it's completely the wrong thing to do. Totally wrong. I would oppose it

with every fibre of my being.

How about that?

Done. You're right.

We work with nine galleries now.

And now Marine is such a giant.

But Sean is the one that came when no one wanted to deal with all the blurry

problems of having a performer artist in a gallery context.

Well obviously performance is by its very nature ephemeral. So what we did

that we very carefully selected one photograph to represent each

And then we made those into editions and we sold them.

And we did them in very small editions.

You have to remember this is 20 odd years ago. So we were selling them for

between $2 ,000 and $5 ,000 each.

And now, you know, they're very sought after. And if you could find them, they

would be between $25 ,000 and $50 ,000 each. The model that we created for

Marina and the way that we created the market for her has become something of a

standard that other people have looked at.

In the 70s, with Ulay, we took such a radical decision to just live in the

We don't need to pay telephone bills, electricity bills, rent bills, and we

didn't have no money at all, but we didn't want to do anything else but

performing. Igor, this is the van where I live.

I live all this time, and two days ago you said how cute, and I said cute is

when it's in a museum, but it was a tough life. It was not cute at all.

I didn't see this car for more than 30 years. And when I arrived in the museum,

it hit me completely unexpected, like in my stomach.

It was something that, like, entire past life just rushed into me.

We have to go in the countryside.

We have to live with shepherds, milk the goats. We have to go with an empty

bottle with mineral water and borrow gasoline on the station.

I knew every shower in every gas station in Europe.

Anyway, I'm very sentimental about this man.

Oh, God, it really breaks my heart, looking at this car inside, and how,

how much belief and hope and innocence our life, you know, was dealing with in

that time. This is incredible happy time of my life in this place.

It was everything I always wanted, the man I love.

And work together and be radical and not making any compromise.

Forever.

Two of us and the dog and the universe.

Show me that incredible road from living there to here.

It's been a long way.

I have to go and put the show together.

I have no time.

Marina was knitting sweaters for the both of us.

I was repairing the car. I drove the car all the time. Marina couldn't drive.

So it was really basic, basic, basic, basic, like modern nomads.

But it was the best time.

And from that, we got a lot of energy and a lot of power.

Straight head. Red light, stop.

Oh.

Green light, go.

Let's stop right here somewhere, because I would like to drive now.

It's my historical moment. I'm going to drive you. First time in my life.

I'm willing to see if I find you.

Why? Will I?

They will never think you'll come to this point.

Ever. Do we have light?

To the right.

No, do I have a light?

Yeah, the light is on.

Oh, that's great. I put the light on already.

Is the brake down or brake is up?

Brake is up. Now it's going to happen. Thank you. I knew something was wrong.

Let's go.

Let's ride.

You're going to be in my hands now.

Yeah, I was afraid so.

Right, a little more.

A little more.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go, go, go, go. It's perfect.

It's perfect.

Just perfect.

Go, perfect.

A warm meter you can go on. Oh, we have to go through this door.

Well, I'm a little shaky, but I'm, you know, shaken but very much taken.

Okay, from one to ten, Ulay, what do you think?

Five. More.

More. Okay, we go for seven and a half. No, we go for seven.

Seven is a good number.

Great.

Well done.

Well done.

Yeah,

you work like hell. That's the only thing I've done.

That's true. I wish to make a zucchini sauce with this pasta.

Our relation was very much to do with a really male -female kind of separation

in the duties. He would do everything with his external world, you know,

grants, finding the money, going to the bank.

And I would do cleaning, washing, taking care of the dog.

And I remember when we split, I didn't have a bank account. I have no idea how

that all worked.

It took me a long time to learn everything from the zero.

You have an opener.

Yes.

After an hour.

more simplistic life.

She became very ambitious, both in the work and in the manifestation of her

ambition, meaning image and wealth.

And I maybe went in a more stable, straight line after separation.

And she climbed this huge mountain with a lot of success.

Maybe it sounds strange, but I don't have the time to do this effort to make

this.

possible for myself.

But anyhow, I don't have to make it possible for myself. I'm just going to

her.

There are not so many artists,

I believe, who are working so hard like Marina does.

But she is always very, very elegant.

And I look like a worker in the field. Of course I'm a worker in the field of

art. But I look like a worker, but I do much less work.

So, you know what I mean.

I'm just lazy.

Nightly Crossing consisted of a man and a woman sitting opposite each other on

two chairs, sitting motionless, silent fasting,

where it mainly was about tremendous dislikes in Western society.

Inactivity, inaction is discredited.

Silence is discredited, and fasting is discredited.

So these are the three things which could upset people pretty much,

when you went for 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12.

13, 14, 15, 16 days inactive, silent, farting,

absolutely motionless, which is almost impossible.

We did nightly crossing for 90 days, non -consecutive days, once and stood up.

I had enough.

A woman can fit better than a man because of anatomy.

And I got up after 13 or 14 days because my ribs were pushing so hard on

my spleen that I went to the hospital and they say, well, you should stop

fasting.

I lost then already 24 pounds.

So that was just over the limit, I think, on my part once.

One of the reasons that he said that he could not sit, he was so skinny that he

was sitting on his bones and was just penetrating through his skin. But okay,

yogi guys do the same, but he didn't. So anyway, and then he said, you have to

stand up because performance can't be without me.

And I didn't see the reason.

That's why in this night, I'm continuous.

I'm continuous, but there is empty chair.

and never have had a relation with a woman, neither with a man, of such a

degree of symbiotic quality for 12 years while we were burning up.

The Marina Ulay collaboration in a simple, direct and profound way

expressed

the male -female dynamic, and then reaches this kind of epic conclusion

walk on the Great Wall of China called The Lovers.

It's beyond operatic in its proportion.

The Lovers, in which Marina and Ulay walked the Great Wall of China, was an

epic.

The three -month process... of walking towards each other.

Very simple, really pared down, and extraordinary in its clarity.

This was the last of their relation works.

And of course, the way the Great Walk ended was with their splitting up.

We, very soon, we become this great art couple when everybody was projecting

like a perfect image.

In reality, he was not happy with his position. And somehow, the more better

pieces we've been doing in the performance, the worse our relation will

private.

And later on, his interest was different than my interest. And he was really

kind of experiencing life, go for drinking, go for the drugs. And then he

unfaithful, which was very hard for me.

We were monogamous till a certain point when the tightness of that

ideology started to unravel, started to

disintegrate a little bit.

Then she had at the same time a sexual adventure with somebody like I had.

The same time.

Except she did it with a friend of ours. I didn't.

Shouldn't have said that.

It took us about eight years of negotiations to get permission to walk

Chinese Wall. And during the negotiations, many times you have to

China. And she was a translator.

And when we finished the Chinese Wall, he told me that she was pregnant.

And he asked me what I should do. I said, what you should do?

You know, I leave and you do whatever you want.

So they married.

It is like, you know, like it began.

It ended like it began. It began like this and it ended like this.

That's all.

After I quit with Ulay, it was the most dramatic moment of my life.

I remember writing in my diary, I was 40, I was...

fat, ugly, and unwanted.

And I said, God, I lost men I love, and I lost my work, because it was working

together. There was nothing there. It was empty.

And I was like, new beginning, or I'm going to totally, you know, go down and

destroy myself in depression.

And this was the moment that I went, first time, had some money in Paris, and

bought first designer clothes.

And I felt... It's all good. I went to hairdresser.

I went to do pedicure, manicure.

I was like, wow.

Wow. What is the price of this kind of jacket? I mean, it's unpayable. You

pay. The price?

The price of a couture, they start from 8 ,000 to, can go to 200, 300, 400 ,000

euros. Depends.

It depends on the pieces.

I've done all this stuff. You know, I made all this work.

I'm fine. Why not feel good and want it again?

And then I really say, oh, God, I really love fashion. And it was the kind of

secret desire.

I mean, it looks amazing.

What do you think? Really? Wow.

Being a performance artist in the 70s to mid -80s is poverty.

Point. Who stopped?

Bye -bye extreme.

After we broke up... She got into theater productions because there was

I mean, the new works of her are highly formalist, aesthetic.

So she clearly had made a step to the theater world.

Very much staged.

with theatrical touch to it.

Marina is a much more theatrical, a much more emotional, a much more dramatic

artist than the show throws.

The risk at the MoMA exhibition will be how far it

goes into being theatrical.

Marina often says there's a difference.

When you perform, you have a knife and it's your blood.

When you're acting, it's ketchup and you don't cut yourself.

If we lose that in the MoMA performance, if it's just a fake knife and ketchup,

then we lost.

I've been in bed six days.

In bed, that's it.

Shit, shit, shit, shit. I didn't leave this bed for six days now.

I was so desperate. I was taking everything.

Anything anybody bring me, I take it.

But then I discovered the syrup with codeine. This is amazing stuff.

I never take drugs, but the codeine really makes you happy.

I slept like a baby yesterday with a smile through the whole night on my

Like hideous.

Anyway, there I am.

I think red is very good here because I always think that red gives strength. So

if I have red collar, red bedsheets, red shawl, red pyjama, red oranges, I maybe

get better soon.

Okay.

What's my monologue?

We don't have power.

And we don't even have the swords to play them on anyway.

Or the players.

Sorry, not yet.

There's nothing.

It's nothing. I mean, it's five days before the show. It looks like there's

show.

Can we start with the rehearsal?

Can we get everybody there?

Please come. Oh,

yes, fine.

Come.

So, can we sit down two seconds? Because I want to see everybody.

Okay.

Hello. It's so different than our workshop in the countryside, I tell you.

going through hell.

And you know, one thing is so important to be open about all this shit, because

it's like I can't pretend now I'm in this damn shit, but I'm not. And also,

know, I didn't even have a personal contact with any of you. I have to trust

with my life for this show, for these three months. There's no other way.

Because it's like, you know, I have to be really...

I have all my energy to make my own piece, knowing that everything is fine

upstairs.

Thank you very much for coming to MoMA tonight.

I'm the curator for Marina Brommer's retrospective, and I would like to

introduce Marina.

very much to Marina.

I thought we should open the podium for questions, so one last chance to ask her

something directly, otherwise we have to wait until June.

I suggest it's too late.

Let's three have three real good questions.

And at least one personal.

How could we know that before?

Personal question.

You seem happy.

Are you?

Depends. You know, so what I can say, I just, I'm very happy to tell by myself

because who I can live with to do this next three months what I want to do.

There's no human being who would stay with me because I, like in a military

drill, you know, I'm in this real complete concentration about doing this

months work because it looks like simple. I'm just in atrium and having

position on the chair.

not like that it's extremely difficult because you have to really be like a

mountain i want to create some kind of stillness in the middle of the of the of

the hell and um and for that i have to be in the right state of mind so i have

to restrict myself with everything and in the winter when i come out it's going

to be summer because that will be 31st of may

Marina is one of the most significant artists of the second part of the 20th

century.

What is so amazing about Marina is that she really invents situations where

nobody has been yet.

Her practice is extreme.

In New York, tens if not hundreds of thousands of people will be invited

to make an experience they've never made before.

MoMA is the most significant context in the world for any living artist to make

a show.

I really see the chance that the performance art become mainstream art.

And with this kind of show in the Museum of Modern Art that never happened

before, it's the big chance.

That incredible feeling of responsibility.

for performance in general.

It's not just for myself.

The

inability

to keep going, the potential of giving up, will become part of the performance

if it occurs.

There could be a fiasco.

I mean, there are no rules.

The artist is present is a hugely courageous piece because it's a piece

fail

That was five years living.

Five years living.

Isn't it great?

That's the other one.

They are simultaneous.

Wow.

Now Ulay is not there. Now there is no life partner.

Now the audience is, in quotes, her lover.

You've been a very bad girl.

Well, that was Beyonce in a new video with Lady Gaga. And Sandy Rios does not

like Lady Gaga's latest video.

This should be outlawed. It should be banned.

Personally, there is a limit to what we should tolerate.

You know, I find it interesting because you've got this Lady Gaga video out now.

And literally, in today's New York Post, there's an article about this exhibit

at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Where daring patrons squeeze through two live nude performers, alternating

couples opposite and same sex, who stand in a narrow doorway of the new exhibit,

which is by some Yugoslavian -born provocateur. As you listen to the sound

this woman's constant guttural screaming and moaning.

That, they say, is art. And it's at MoMA.

images, like four images from the exhibition.

You know, we're not trying to stop the coverage. We're just not going to have a

circus going on inside.

Friday we had some weirdos, but we were expecting it.

I think some people are starting to understand that it's possibly a stage,

possibly an important window.

The problem of the day was that we established a signal of emergency for

So if she raised her hand, it could mean many things, but essentially it means,

please ask the person who is sitting with me to leave for some reason.

i don't feel comfortable i'm scared i don't feel well many different reasons

yeah this thing that is like sort of cleaning the cleaning the thing and

then boom like it reconnects and it's only for you so each and everyone had

a clean unique and personal contact with marina boom like a magnet

What is so beautiful about the MoMA performance, she's treating actually

human being she has encountered with the same attention and same respect. That's

pretty shocking.

And some people are shocked by this, and some people anyway think they deserve

this attention, and they are finally where they should be.

And others fall in love with her.

There's so many different reasons why people come to sit in front of me.

Some of them, they're angry. Some of them, they're curious.

Some of them just want to know what happened.

Some of them, they're really open, and you feel incredible pain.

How many people have so much pain?

When they're sitting in front of me, it's not about me anymore.

It's very soon.

I'm just a mirror of their own self.

Somebody told me the other day that for most masterpieces, people stand in front

of it for 30 seconds.

Mona Lisa, 30 seconds.

People come and sit here all day.

The world is moving so fast now.

People barely have an attention span at all.

She slows everybody's brain down.

She... She asks us to stay there for quite a length of time, which we're not

used to doing.

She transforms us as a result.

Marina is an artist that visualizes time using her body.

in the space with the audience.

By the mere duration she brings time in as a weight.

It's a weight on the performer's shoulders.

Taking a piece out of the performer's life has a value.

Time is not an ephemeral just rushing by.

Just imagine time as an unbearably large object you cannot move

and you are caught in.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We open at 10 .30 tomorrow.

My God. No, no, no. Come back tomorrow.

Be with me. Come back tomorrow, okay?

You'll give me a chance?

When you come back tomorrow, we'll talk about it.

You'll give me a chance? No, I'm not giving you a chance. We'll talk about it

tomorrow. You said so. No, I didn't say so. I've got hair. I've got my witness.

Ladies, let's move.

You okay?

You want me to get a wheelchair?

No, no, no.

Give me a couple of seconds.

Okay. I'm putting on the ground along.

Thank you.

This is about limits.

Even for me.

I was thinking it was a mistake.

Incredibly, I was expecting another three hours.

I was thinking it was so short.

I don't know.

Today?

Yeah. I saw her having pain. I saw and heard the guards saying that they were

worried. So I say, if you think you ruin your health, if you think you damage

your body, then I offer you officially now to end the performance.

So painful.

Okay. She just said, no, it would never be an option. So she was like, not even

considering it, not even listening to the end of my sentence. She was just

saying, no, I would never, never consider this.

There is pain, but the pain is like a kind of keeping secrets.

The moment you really go through the door of pain, you enter to another state

mind.

The feeling of beauty and unconditional love and this feeling of there is no

kind of border between your body and environment.

And you start having this incredible feeling of lightness.

and harmony with yourself, something becomes like a holy. I can't explain.

And that other state of mind is exactly what the public starts feeling that

something is different.

Performance is all about state of mind.

The public is like a dog.

They can feel insecurity.

They can feel fear. They can feel you're not there.

So the idea is how you can bring the performer and the audience in the same

state of consciousness here and now.

It's just a little glue to keep it in position

It's so interesting that I could not do without table in the first two months. I

need to have a structure. I need to have the table. And the table has to get

there until I really got to the point that I actually don't need the table.

And once the table is removed, it's so much more direct. How do you feel about

it? What do you think is the difference?

The difference is that from a security point of view, there's no buffer between

two of them.

You know, like if somebody is going to do something, there's nothing preventing

someone from doing something, you know. That's the only thing I feel, but we're

just going to instruct everyone, everyone that has to sit in front of her

you cannot move, touch, hug, or do anything.

She makes herself so much more vulnerable. It's so much more direct.

There's no obstacle between her and the audience.

So she was right.

Priest doesn't need the cross.

Nine, ten.

Three, two.

We're almost done.

You said it in April, too.

These are details you cannot grab a few minutes here and there.

A few minutes. Watch one mom. A few minutes.

One week here, one week there.

You bastard.

They need to concentrate on the details.

You need to be careful.

I stand in the line several days and I didn't get it in there. Yeah. Yeah.

Yesterday I was there at five in the morning. I didn't, I didn't make it very

now at the end, it's very competitive.

People camping out all night and waiting.

It throws open the whole kind of rock star question, performance star, and

basically a groupie question.

You know, I think what's fantastically interesting about her work and this work

is the blank slate aspect of it. What it brings out in everyone from the art

world, people that claim they know the work very well, people that are part of

this vocabulary and this language, and then...

outright strangers and people that come in and go, well, why is she doing this?

And that's endlessly interesting because what you're really seeing is this giant

canvas also of projections.

Marina's connection to the audience comes out of this extraordinary lack

she feels or she felt as a child.

She desires to be loved. She desires to be needed.

Marina does have the experience.

that she needs the audience like air to breathe.

That's the gasoline she's running on.

She lives for her art, she lives for the audience.

When I met her, I thought, oh God, she's in love with me.

And it took me a while.

to understand that she is in love with the world.

So it's not personal.

Don't take it personal. I'm in love with the world. I'm not in love only with

you.

I realize she is repeating this misunderstanding with every single

atrium.

I don't know if the public idolizes me.

It's their own thing, how they project, but it's not my aim.

It's like, you know, if you come to a certain point of your career, you are

idolized, you have the money, and you are famous, but this is not the aim of

art. It's just a side effect.

It's like a bee product.

I love bee products.

He plays around and you're kind of aware of him, but the connection with Marina

is so strong that it doesn't... It really pushes it away.

Do you see acting in the film?

No, but it's that... I mean, if you say it's acting, it's... The only thing

maybe that's similar is that there are people watching. The sacrifice of

for a performance.

It seems that that's always involved in acting.

Are you an actor?

Yeah. Okay. You have that presence.

Thank you.

She told me that 750 ,000 people saw the show.

It's like a million.

I feel that we should prolong it for some month more so we can get the

Let's go, let's go, let's go. Is this from the cook?

The cook? Yes, yes.

Who is this good -looking Asian man?

We are close

to the end.

Actually, I saw Marina's exhibit the first time. I'm really inspired to get

performance art, to make my own performance art, and to do it. And I

like... Being here is actually like kind of a piece in itself, like dedicating

this much commitment to her.

We are there, kids.

Almost there.

Next time, I'm in the country.

Do you have a number?

I wish I had a number, but I don't have one.

I came all the way from Australia to see Marina.

Do you need a number?

I was sad and happy all together.

They are up to sit. They just get out of the museum and sit in front until the

morning.

My God, this is amazing. This is the last day, you know.

I don't think anybody imagines...

This. What time is now?

It's now 10 .15.

Can we do the chase? We can do the chase.

We already planned it. I know what to do.

I'll give you a piece of paper, and then we'll do 15 -minute intervals.

You'll just go out, tap the person on the shoulder, or tell them the time is

expired. The museum is not going to open until 10 .30, but we're going to let 40

people in.

If you are not planning to sit in front of Marina, you don't have to come in

now. You can wait until we open.

Twenty -one times sitting with Maureen, I hope it's powerful meaning.

Were you expecting to be transformed?

No, it was just when I saw the first time I came and, you know, wanted to

experience and then, you know, everything happened.

We have come to sit with Marina before a Babylon and confess.

Speech is her pure form against pure form, the reflection of an emptiness

of value.

We have come as the last spectators before the crucifixion. We sit as

at her table and our nonchalance betrays her.

And look, it's like it's a matter of time before firing someone in the face

going to be art.

You're going to sit across from the audience in silence. There are no

distractions.

Distractions of any sort.

No gestures.

You don't speak to the audience. You don't move your hand.

That's the matter. You all right?

You nervous?

We've been waiting 16 hours. Okay, well, your moment's coming up shortly, okay?

All right, I'll let you know. Thank you.

Let's go with it.

Okay,

we need somebody to get in, please.

Come on, let's go. I know, I know, I know.

We need to get the performance needs to continue.

Maybe you've got a whip or something.

We need the performance needs to continue.

Because I think there's maybe still hope that I'll get upstairs. So I'm like, I

don't know if you guys should be filming me.

So I would love to just get across to her. I mean, I didn't know it was a

I didn't realize.

And I would have obeyed the rule if I had known.

But I wanted it to be spontaneous. I didn't want anybody to know. I wanted it

be my own thing and special with her. And I thought in that space, in that

square, you get your own.

It's like the audience is part of the art, and we bring to it. And I just

to be as vulnerable to her as she makes herself to everyone else.

I actually think the exhibition is a self -portrait.

That's her. There she sits.

And she gives it all.

She always talks about the here and now.

But this piece, the title, Marina Abramovich, the artist's presence at the

-portrait.

She did create a charismatic face.

A little rent in the fabric of the universe that was wholly her own, that

occupied.

And she did it in a room filled with many, many people. And many, many people

felt that charismatic space as a reality.

That's an extraordinary achievement.