Performance is there, and if you are not there in that moment it happened, it just stays in the memory. It's so immaterial and something this immaterial is very difficult to collect. Its difficult to buy, its how we can buy immaterial art.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the transient nature of performance art, emphasizing that experiences are fleeting and intangible.
Marina Abramovic's quote reflects on the ephemeral quality of performance art, noting that while the performance itself can be physically present, the true experience occurs in the moment and cannot be fully captured or purchased afterward. This immateriality creates a challenge in preserving the essence of the performance, making it something unique and rare in the world of art.
In practice
An artist's statement during an exhibition opening.
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.
I hate the idea of theatre just being an evening pastime. It should be emotionally and intellectually demanding. I love football. The level of analysis that you listen to on the terraces is astonishing. If people did that in the theatre... but they don't. They expect to sit back and not participate.
Tom's great yellow bronze mask all draped upon an iron framework. An inhibited, nerve-drawn; dropped face - as if hung on a scaffold of heavy private brooding; and thought.
I never see one woman when I design, it's always a universe of women
That’s my idea of what a portrait ought to be, anonymous and documentary and a straightforward picture of mankind.
Whenever I write a novel, music just sort of naturally slips in (much like cats do, I suppose).
Photographs may be more memorable than moving images, because they are a neat slice of time, not a flow. Each still photograph is a privileged moment turned into a slim object that one can keep and look at again.
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