Marina Abramovic Quotes - Page 5

I think the role of artists in the past was very different. Artists had less responsibility in many ways.

Dali Lama said, 'when you open the heart of the person with humor, you can tell him the most truth. But if you tell him truth without humor, the heart closes.'

I always do big birthday things. In three years, I'm 70. I'm going to do something outrageous. In America, everyone's always hiding their age.

We, performers, work on willpower. This willpower works in a short term, not durational.

If you have to do durational work, you have to train! No bullshit. You can't do it for three months. You can do it for five hours, 10 hours, and then you have three months rest. If this is your job, you have to be flexible.

Most artists create foundations where they put their own work. Here I'm not putting my own work. I'm just creating the chambers.

There has been evolution in my work. In the beginning I was very much busy with the physical body and the limits of the physical body but that somehow naturally led me to the mental body and how I could deal with that. Stillness is so much harder, especially for three months. It was a big challenge. As a performer it is the most difficult experience one can have. And the interactive experience with the public made it even harder.

You know the movie "Rashomon" from [Takeshi] Kurosawa, when all the people in the forest see something different? Each performance was like that.

Talking about [Donald] Trump, there's nothing wrong with Trump. He's who he is. It's wrong with us, who let him [win]. That's what's wrong. It's not that he's going to change, but the people who think like him.

When I was young, I couldn't think about ballet because I had to focus on my own field. But once you secure your own performance area, you can indulge yourself in different territories. Fashion is one. And ballet is absolutely a fantasy, because it deals with the bodies in a different way.

Today, our attention is less than the television advertisement. We're looking at six or seven problems constantly. We're living in the disturbed societies of cities. I think modern technology is one of the worst things human beings have invented.

I notice if I'm too fat or if I'm too ugly or there's skin hanging or whatever. When my clothes start not fitting, I get really self-conscious about what I eat.

Being an artist is not easy - I have always said that to the students I have taught over the years. It's a huge sacrifice.

With classical ballet you are literally injuring yourself.

I had to leave some traces. In the beginning, I would give complete instructions to the photographer. In the '70s, people would come to photograph your work and you would just end up with this crazy material that had nothing to do with your work; maybe I'd pick up two or three photographs that were the closest to the idea. This is why when you look at the '70s, you see much less documentation and really bad material. The material will become misleading to what the piece was.

That's something that I'm trying to do in my work, to send a message to western people. They're the ones who are completely disconnected.

I really like dark, politically incorrect humor.

If you look at the lives of artists, sitting in nature, painting, having the freedom. I think it's over. I think we're living in such a difficult moment of human development. Artists have more responsibility than ever before.

From the very early stage when I started doing performance art in the '70s, the general attitude - not just me, but also my colleagues - was that there should not be any documentation, that the performance itself is artwork and there should be no documentation.

We don't have politicians with dignity and morals. We never have, not since [Nelson] Mandela and [Mahatma ] Gandhi. It's really rare.

Zooming in, zooming out. I was shocked. I said, "Let's erase this right now, put the camera behind the stage and I'll do the performance just for the camera." He set up everything and I told him to go outside and smoke a cigarette. Come back when I finish. Don't touch the camera. This was the way how I've done most everything after that.

When I did "Seven Easy Pieces," I actually re-performed the performances of other artists. It was such difficult work because I had to really go through the documentation, look through the sources, to ask the witnesses who saw it.

My memoirs are full of humor, I had to change jokes because it was a little too dark.

I had such an intense relationship to every person. I still see people on the street and we lock eyes, and say "Oh my god!" and we just kiss and stay like that and sometimes cry.

We're destroying the planet, and the planet rebels.