You see, what is my purpose of performance artist is to stage certain difficulties and stage the fear the primordial fear of pain, of dying, all of which we have in our lives, and then stage them in front of audience and go through them and tell the audience, 'I'm your mirror; if I can do this in my life, you can do it in yours.'
Interpretation
Marina Abramovic uses performance art to confront fears and pain, encouraging the audience to face their own challenges.
In this quote, Marina Abramovic expresses her goal as a performance artist: to bring the audience face to face with fundamental human fears such as pain and death. By staging these difficult experiences in a controlled environment, she aims to reflect the audience's struggles and inspire them with the message that if she can confront her own fears, they too can face their challenges in life.
In practice
In a motivational speech addressing overcoming fear.
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.
Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.
I see myself as a perennial expatriate because, frankly, I don't think I fit comfortably in any conventional form of filmmaking, and I feel at the same time, depending on the project, I fit into many different ones.
To the Suprematist the visual phenomena of the objective world are, in themselves, meaningless; the significant thing is feeling, as such, quite apart from the environment in which it is called forth.
I think that cinema and the arts are central in our lives because we grow up and learn about the world through our exposure to stories. Parents use them as a tool to teach their children fundamental truths and values, much as adults can view them to gain exposure to cultures and individuals that they'd never be able to view in their own lives.
I don't live for the accolades. I'm more so about the music. Making it, and putting it out. Those are the two best feelings.
You can't just tell actors, especially young ones, to 'act happy' and expect them to do it. They must in some essential way be happy.
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