For me, performance is a holy ground. When I perform, I really step into a different state of consciousness.
Interpretation
The quote expresses the profound nature of performance as a transformative experience that transcends ordinary awareness.
Marina Abramovic underscores the significance of performance as a deeply sacred and transformative act. For her, stepping into this realm elevates her consciousness, suggesting that the act of performing enables one to access a higher state of awareness, connection, and creativity beyond the mundane aspects of daily life.
In practice
A director could use this quote during a workshop to inspire actors to connect deeply with their roles.
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.
Basically everything I've done in art, I was in possession of when I was 20 years old. I use a waste retrieval method of working. I'll go back and use something that disgusted me 15 years ago but that I had enough sense to think about. Some artists change dramatically. I see my work more like history being written.
Art must be an expression of love or it is nothing.
Hip-hop was indifferent to Broadway. We didn't need Broadway, but I think Broadway needed hip-hop.
Great art is never produced for its own sake. It is too difficult to be worth the effort.
Working in Hollywood does give one a certain expertise in the field of prostitution.
The pure work implies the disappearance of the poet as speaker, who hands over to the words.
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