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.
As a poet and writer, I deeply love and I deeply hate words. I love the infinite evidence and change and requirements and possibilities of language; every human use of words that is joyful, or honest or new, because experience is new... But as a Black poet and writer, I hate words that cancel my name and my history and the freedom of my future: I hate the words that condemn and refuse the language of my people in America.
To be willing to sort of die in order to move the reader, somehow. Even now I'm scared about how sappy this'll look in print, saying this.
The best music, you can seek some shelter in it momentarily, but it's essentially there to provide you something to face the world with.
When done right, music should breathe, be alive. It's not about getting it perfect, it's about capturing lightning in a bottle.
I wish the stage were as narrow as the wire of a tighrope dancer so that no incompetent would dare step upon it.
[When accepting the American Film Institute Life Achievement award] I beg permission to mention by name only four people who have given me the most affection, appreciation, and encouragement, and constant collaboration. The first of the four is a film editor, the second is a scriptwriter, the third is the mother of my daughter Pat (Patricia Hitchcock), and the fourth is as fine a cook as ever performed miracles in a domestic kitchen. And their names are Alma Reville.
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