To be a performance artist, you have to hate theatre. Theatre is fake... The knife is not real, the blood is not real, and the emotions are not real. Performance is just the opposite: the knife is real, the blood is real, and the emotions are real.
Interpretation
Performance art emphasizes raw, genuine emotions over the often artificial nature of traditional theatre.
Marina Abramovic's quote highlights the fundamental difference between theatre and performance art. While theatre often relies on scripted performances with props and rehearsed emotions that can feel detached from reality, performance art seeks to engage the audience with authentic, visceral experiences that convey the true, unfiltered essence of human emotion, often using real-life elements that confront the audience's perceptions and emotions in an immediate way.
In practice
During a discussion on the differences in artistic expression at an art symposium.
All the aggressive actions I do to myself I would never dream of doing in my own life - I am not this kind of person. I cry if I cut myself peeling potatoes. I am taking the plane, there is turbulence, I am shaking. In performance, I become, somehow, like not a mortal.
I hate studio. For me, studio is a trap to overproduce and repeat yourself. It is a habit that leads to art pollution.
The function of the artist in a disturbed society is to give awareness of the universe, to ask the right questions, and to elevate the mind.
First of all, to do performance art, you really have to give 100 percent. I only know that I have to give 100 percent and then what happens, happens.
Theatre is fake... The knife is not real, the blood is not real, and the emotions are not real. Performance is just the opposite: the knife is real, the blood is real, and the emotions are real.
I want people to come to me open and vulnerable. When they come to the gallery, they have to leave their watches, their computers, their Blackberrys, iPads, iPhones, because we are so incredibly used to technology, and I wanted to remove that.
But in the next world I shan't be doing music, with all the striving and disappointments. I shall be being it.
Whether you like it or not, a child really connects you to that time when everything's new. It's so important - not just for artistic endeavors, but for humanity.
When you first start out in stand-up and, probably, as any performer, you enjoy the attention so much, and even though that hasn't died down on stage, it certainly has satiated whatever was in me that was needing that much attention. When I'm off stage, it's not something that I really need.
I found a comfort in trying to solve some poetic problems because there were human ones I just couldn't solve.
The artist must be in his work as God is in creation, invisible and all-powerful; one must sense him everywhere but never see him.
What I'm working on now - I'm back to fantasy, although considering that it's me, I'm turning it into a kind of science fantasy. It's a vampire story - but my vampires are biological vampires. They didn't become vampires because someone bit them; they were born that way.
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