Marina Abramovic Quotes
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I am only interested in the ideas that become obsessive and make me feel uneasy. The ideas that I'm afraid of.
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We always project into the future or reflect in the past, but we are so little in the present.
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For me, performance is a holy ground. When I perform, I really step into a different state of consciousness.
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One of the most wonderful things for me is to watch somebody else perform, where I am the audience - I love this more than ever.
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If you're a baker, making bread, you're a baker. If you make the best bread in the world, you're not an artist, but if you bake the bread in the gallery, you're an artist. So the context makes the difference.
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The big problem of our modern society is that we feel that we are separated from the nature. But it's just the opposite. We are interrelated and our DNA is the same. And only when human beings understand that, the nature will not be obstacle.
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When Lady Gaga says I am her inspiration, you reach kids between 12 and 18. Now I am like a brand - jeans, Coca-Cola.
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I test the limits of myself in order to transform myself, but I also take the energy from the audience and transform it.
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You know, art is very emotional business. But mostly it becomes not emotional, the fabric of commodity. It becomes business. It becomes so many different things. Because we forgot there was emotions involved.
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Every party is the same, too many people, too little food, and you have to wait around. I'm extremely bored with parties.
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Happiness is such a good state, it doesn't need to be creative. You're not creative from happiness, you're just happy. You're creative when you're miserable and depressed. You find the key to transform things. Happiness does not need to transform.
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You know how you feel somebody looking at you, and you turn, and somebody actually is? It's the same at an art gallery. You're looking at one portrait, turn around, and there is a work of art directly behind you. Because it's all energy. Every single thing has energy.
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I think 21st century should be art without objects.
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We make such terrible mistakes with visual choices about beauty.
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In real life, you just work for the ordinary self, but in the front of audience you become the superself. That's a completely different thing.
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People in New York never have time for anything.
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I believe so much in the power of performance I don't want to convince people. I want them to experience it and come away convinced on their own.
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Woody Allen has a wonderful line: 'Today I'm a star. What will I be tomorrow? A black hole?' That's very important to know - that you have the moment, then you lose the moment. You have to see your chances, you have to take them, and you also have to see when you don't have chances to take.
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Theater is something that as a performance artist you have to hate.
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I'm interested in asking: 'What does feminine energy mean?' I don't have answers - I just have questions and interesting examples.
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The hardest thing to do is something that is close to nothing.
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From the very early stage when I started doing performance art in the '70s, the general attitude - not just me, but also my colleagues - was that there should not be any documentation, that the performance itself is artwork and there should be no documentation.
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With classical ballet you are literally injuring yourself.