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.
Your voice is not your instrument. Your voice is the character that you build, your innermost feelings, the things that you want to say, and your instrument is the vehicle that you use to carry the message.
Too often, if you look back through the history of representation and you take the work of African-American artists, the work is on such a modest scale that it becomes sort of inconsequential.
Auden said poetry makes nothing happen. But I wonder if the opposite could be true. It could make something happen.
I'm not responsible for my photographs. Photography is not documentary, but intuition, a poetic experience. It's drowning yourself, dissolving yourself, and then sniff, sniff, sniff - being sensitive to coincidence. You can't go looking for it; you can't want it, or you won't get it. First you must lose your self. Then it happens.
Real music is always revolutionary, for it cements the ranks of the people; it arouses them and leads them onward.
Designing renders visible our hopes and dreams. It is the first signal of human intentions.
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