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.
So many cartoonists draw the same year after year. When they find a style, they stick with it. They don't mess with innovation, and they become boring.
This is the theory… that anything that is art… is presumably about some certain thing, but is really always about something else, and it’s no good having one without the other, because if you just have the something it is boring and if you just have the something else it’s irritating.
Seek for the boldest color possible, content is irrelevant.
The water crumbles on it's way down as my hands and feet push me forward. The world is lightening, taking shape, and turning to color. It feels like it's being painted around me.
I just wanted to go to New York and be on Broadway, but then I was accepted by Juilliard, where they trained me in classical voice. It was great in the end, but at the time, I thought, 'What am I doing here? This is not my path.' But it was absolutely my path and where I was meant to be.
I could paint for a hundred years, a thousand years without stopping and I would still feel as though I knew nothing.
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