Through performance, I found the possibility of establishing a dialogue with the audience through an exchange of energy, which tended to transform the energy itself. I could not produce a single work without the presence of the audience, because the audience gave me the energy to be able, through a specific action, to assimilate it and return it, to create a genuine field of energy.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the dynamic relationship between the artist and the audience in the creative process.
Marina Abramovic emphasizes the vital role of the audience in her performances, suggesting that art is not just a solitary act of creation, but rather a collaborative exchange of energy. The presence of the audience provides her with the necessary inspiration and motivation to create, demonstrating how performance art is a shared experience that transforms both the performer and the spectators.
In practice
In a discussion about the role of the audience in performance art during a workshop.
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.
In a Cafe" I watched a man in a cafe fold a slice of bread as if he were folding a birth certificate or looking at the photograph of a dead lover.
You don't always have to show art in what's called a white box; you can have a kind of complexity within an exhibit which actually respects the art as well.
Because here’s the thing: No matter how much one tells stories of magical beasts or impossible worlds, in the end, it is always the world of here and now one is writing about. The better one understands that world, the more powerful the stories will be.
Artists are meant to be madmen, to disturb and shock us.
To disappear your complete self into a character is quite difficult. I've tried it 85 times, and I've succeeded two or three times.
At Vienna, one of the audience affirmed publicly that my performance was not surprising, for he had distinctly seen, while I was playing my variations, the devil at my elbow, directing my arm and guiding my bow. My resemblance to the devil was a proof of my origin.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.