Karen Archey: Marina, what are some of the most common questions you get about your work over the years?
Marina: I’ve been thinking my entire life about the question that’s followed me from the beginning of my career: Why is this art? I answered this millions of times. When I came to the Royal Academy in London, I was thinking, nobody is going to ask that. But still, I’ve been asked, why is this art? Is it going to happen here again?
Karen Archey: No… but how do you answer that, actually?
[audience laughs]
Marina: If you’re a baker and you make bread in the bakery, and you make the best possible bread, you’re still not an artist, you’re just a baker. However, is that same bread you made in the gallery? You’re just a voice. The context makes the difference. Where are you making what? I’m doing performances, but I’m doing it in the museum. It’s definitely not street theater, it’s not pantomime, and it’s not musical. It’s just really art performances in the museum. That context also actually makes me an artist. And this is what I do. I don’t know how to do anything else.
Rein Wolfs: Every single detail counts. Marina, when you think about doing a retrospective exhibition, there’s also a lot of detail involved. You have to make choices. Can you tell us something about those choices?
Marina: If you do the exhibition in the gallery, it’s one thing. If you do the exhibition in the museum, it’s completely different, because you have the space that one architect made. I’ll never forget my story with the Groninger Museum. This was such a strange experience, because the architect of the Groninger Museum actually gives a selection of the colors that you have to use for your exhibition. The artists did not have any say in this. He had full control over the color field. You can have dark blue, you can have turquoise, you can have, I don’t know, pink, all the colors, but not white. White was out of the question. When I went to that museum for a show with Ulay many years ago, I was completely restricted. I had to follow what architects say, which is not easy. Then you have the Zaha Hadid Museum, where actually all the walls are curved. Another difficult problem. Then you go to Pompidou, where the walls are not real and they don’t go all the way to the ground.
It’s like, so much stuff that you can really think about, how to fit it somewhere. My dream is, to tell you the truth, and I’m sure you don’t want to hear about it, is being in the old building of the Stedelijk Museum. I think the old building would have been incredible for the show, because we really reflect the Royal Academy building, which is from the eighteenth century and like this one. However, I got the Rem Koolhaas space, so I have to do my best with the black cube and no daylight.
Rein Wolfs: You’ve done more than your best.
Karen Archey: Well, I am actually quite happy that the exhibition is in the new building, because we could use the architecture of the space and, for example, create that really crazy sightline onto Luminosity and use these gigantic projections. It’s very different than what’s possible in the smaller rooms.
Marina Abramovic: I don’t agree.
Rein Wolfs: Isn’t it interesting to make a difference between the show here and at the Royal Academy? Because the first venue of the exhibition was the Royal Academy, which also has more space, actually, than we have here in the museum.
Marina Abramovic: Adjusting a show in a completely modern building is complicated. Many elements of the exhibition could not fit in the space at all. For the Zaha Hadid building the show needs to be adjusted again—I just have to deal with it. It’s really interesting to work with different concepts and make the show so that you don’t have too much compromise, but still create content that really works.
Gallery views of the Marina Abramović exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, from March 16 – July 14, 2024. Photo: LNDW Studio.
Karen Archey: I got a question from the press that really made me think a lot about your work. I was wondering if you have any works from throughout your practice that are the most important for you, that stand out or are extra special.
Marina: As for myself, I don’t look at it this way. What art is important, and what is not important. I’m not nostalgic about the old days. Old work and things are changing, which for me is very important to actually relate to my failures. The work that didn’t work, the work that I failed. That’s so incredibly interesting, because when you really want to do something different, something new, you go into a territory that you’ve never been to. Then, if you go to this kind of territory, you get out of your safety box, and when you do that, you may fail. I have a few works like that. One I’ve done is here. I am not going to tell you which one at all. However, you know that there was a really big failure. I had never rehearsed the work before, and it went wrong in the middle of the performance. I realize that it is complete bullshit what I’m doing, but I can’t stop because people are looking at me, and I have to continue.
What is interesting, when I finish the work, the criticism can be good. I know deep inside of me that I didn’t give my 150 percent. You can tell me whatever you want, I know it was not good. Even if the critics say the opposite. And then, if I do something where I put my entire soul, every molecule of my being, into the work and the criticism is bad, I don’t care at all, because I know I made it my best and this is all that matters.
Karen Archey: That’s a beautiful response. I know you don’t want to look back too much and that you’d rather not get too nostalgic, but I think a lot about your life and how much your biography has also influenced your work. For example, the year 1988, the separation with Ulay, and how you made biographies some years later, the theater piece. I’m wondering if you see your work like that, having written a memoir—as being influenced by certain periods of your life. Or is that something that just happens?
Marina: First of all, I hate the studio. I think the studio is a trap for me. I mean, other artists have different opinions, but I absolutely don’t like studios. I don’t like to go to the studio. I don’t like to do anything the same way. I don’t like to repeat myself. What I do and my entire inspiration comes from life. I do life, and from life comes the work, and the ideas come from everywhere: from traveling, sitting in the kitchen and peeling garlic, or going to the bathroom, or in the train station. The airport is a great time, too. What I really like, which is something actually very interesting for me, is where ideas come from—something which I call space in between. Space in between is when you leave a situation where your home is stable, your friends, and your routine. Then you go to an unknown country or place via a bus station, train station, or airplane. This waiting for something. This space in between, when we are completely open to destiny. You’re open to everything. Anything can happen. There’s a space in between where really you’re vulnerable. Then the best ideas come and you have to expose yourself to that kind of space.
Rein Wolfs: Is that also what you could call the life of a nomadic artist? Weren’t you one of the artists, together with Ulay, who made this possible? That the artist is not a studio artist anymore, but a nomadic artist, and is living in-between spaces in Amsterdam, but also driving around with a Citroën van through the rest of Europe, being a nomadic artist, being everywhere.
Marina: Yes, it is very important to really move, and also to be nomadic you have to be free. You have to have no obligations. You can’t have a family with children and you can’t have one home to come back to. Nomadic means being ready to go anywhere, anytime. Just taking the hours as a studio.
Rein Wolfs: Is that also like following the rhythm of life? Because when you’re working on this project of integrating art and life, you’re also looking at how life itself moves.
Marina: The older you get, the wiser you get. One important thing to me is what I call synchronicity. When the things you do seamlessly align with everything around you.. When you’re really in tune with nature and the energy around you, and this happens to you without effort. First of all, you have to put so much effort in the work, but when you show the work it has to look like it’s done without any effort. You can only do this when you really have the wisdom of old age.
Rein Wolfs: However, effort is a key thing in your work of course. When we talk about durational performances, for instance, effort is the basis.
Marina: That looks simple.
Karen Archey: I think it’s also like that emotional impact that draws people to your work. I guess it’s presented in a very elegant and simple way. One of the most common reactions we get from the exhibition—and I have been getting a lot of questions from visitors and the press—is, “How is this possible? How can one person do this?” For example, walking across the Great Wall of China and these kinds of things. Does she want to hurt herself? Or there are these kinds of very basic emotional questions of how this person makes this possible.
Marina: I think it’s really to do with my DNA —coming from ex-Yugoslavia, having a mother and father who are communists and both national heroes, having my grandmother who hates communism and being deeply religious —and a mixture of all of this. My upbringing was really based on discipline and willpower and concentration My private life was not important, although what you actually give to society, your content contribution, and the meaning of your life have always been important to me. My work is all about what I’m giving to the public. What is the meaning of all this in my life? I mean, this is the big question that I was confronted with as a child.
Rein Wolfs, Karen Archey and Marina Abramović at the conversation series Artist Talk at the Stedelijk Museum on March 17, 2024. Photo: Maarten Nauw.
Karen Archey: I think your work is so incredibly relatable. Also, you as a person are also incredibly relatable, and those lessons are almost broader than literally living a nomadic life and living in these kinds of in-between spaces, which could also potentially be a mindset. Even though that’s the way you may have performed them or experienced them in the past, what’s so powerful about your work is that everyone can access these feelings and these things.
Marina: To me, it’s very important that everyone, from the person who cleans streets to the president of the country, can understand what I’m doing on any level, and I’m always there to explain it. I mean, this is my belief, which many artists don’t share with me, that artists should be a servant of society, that art is not just without any function. Art was really serving the aristocrats and church and partition and gods. Now, art has to serve people, and the public becomes part of the art more and more.
Karen Archey: What is the role of the audience in your work?
Marina: Everything. It’s really interesting that Martha Graham, the great dancer, said once that every time you see dance, dance. It is a holy ground. I have a different appreciation of this. To me, wherever there’s public, that space becomes sacred, because without the public, there’s no performance. Performance in public creates unity, creates community, and they feed each other with energy. This is absolutely essential. Performance without public means there’s no work.
Karen Archey: This is a question I’ve been dying to ask you for years. I was wondering how you relate to the practices of the 1970s that are more canonized, such as conceptual art and second-wave feminism. You oftentimes say that you don’t ascribe to those systems of thought. Do you consider yourself engaging in events of that period?
Marina: I don’t know. I have said so many times that art doesn’t have gender or sexuality. I don’t care who makes it. I think that art has only two categories: good and bad art. That’s it. I hate anything putting it into these -isms. The moment you have feminism and you have the exhibition of feminist art, then you immediately have the exhibition of male art. This is such a terrible division, which I think art should not have. I was looking into this problem, and I think that I’m starting to see what women have done wrong. It’s not just the fault of men.
In the 1950s in America, there was incredible abstract art being made by fantastic female artists, but only male artists were shown. Why didn’t they show female artists? What was the problem? It was how we create—we put ourselves in the position of fragility and not the position of strength. To me, I feel like a warrior, an Amazon, I can do anything. I can never imagine the whole idea of abuse. I would just kick everybody’s balls, everybody that touches me. I mean, why don’t we use the energy we naturally possess, the strength that enables us to give birth? This is the power that women have. That is unbelievable strength. We have to use that. I never had any of these problems. I never want to be in any kind of category, ever.
Karen Archey: It’s so interesting to hear that, because I remember, for example, in the development of the exhibition, we were looking at various places for the Portal, which weighs something like 600 kilos. At some point, one of the employees said, “But it’s too heavy, so we can’t put it there.” You said, “Well, what do you do with the Richard Serra then?” They responded, “Well, we make a plate for it to spread out the weight.” You said, “Well, do that for me.” And I think that is living feminism.
Marina: You forget something, that an incredibly important part of my life is the sentence: If you say no to me, it is only the beginning.
[audience laughs]
Karen Archey: I recognize that for sure.
Rein Wolfs: That’s where the curatorial part should change and come into action again.
Karen Archey: Well, it’s interesting to hear your thoughts on that, Marina, because I see you as someone who describes herself as feminist, as I do. I see you as a living example of female strength. To me, feminism is just the desire for women to be treated equally as men. That’s it.
Marina: Do we know how we are going to fight all this? I was thinking about Louise Bourgeois, who died at the age of ninety-eight. Not one of these women reached a hundred. So the goal in my life is to go over a hundred. Then you are really respected and nobody will ask you, “Why is this art?”
[audience laughs and claps]
The worst is to have a sick body and old age, but to have really old age and the wisdom of old age, that’s what I love. Now, I would never want to return to being twenty, thirty, or forty, because those years mean a sort of ignorant suffering; you lack understanding. . Now is really good. You really know what you know and you can share this knowledge with the young generation of artists, which is what I do.
Karen Archey: Do you consider yourself a teacher because you have such a strong relationship with so many young people?
Marina: I am very passionate about teaching. I really like teaching, and I have taught for many years, more than twenty-five. What I really like about teaching is, there’s a kind of exchange I give to the young generation of artists. My wisdom of something I have done for fifty-five years, but they give me a sense of time, a sense of the moment we live now. This is so important to me, that I really understand the present. My generation ignores the young people. They always think that their own time is better. I don’t think so. I think the young generation is vibrant, full of energy, has incredible ideas, and I love supporting them. I love seeing them grow and seeing them find their own way. When I teach a lesson, number one is you should never look like me. I only ever wanted to really put the effort into their story. They should come with their own ideas which come from their own life. They have to be authentic and have to be original.
Rein Wolfs, Karen Archey and Marina Abramović at the conversation series Artist Talk at the Stedelijk Museum on March 17, 2024. Photo: Maarten Nauw.
Karen Archey: That really hits on how I’ve felt about working with you. There’s such a connection between your work and your life in your practice, and also how you treat people. I know you say “no” is just the beginning, but it’s always done in such a kind way. I see all of these things, and also Star House, which is Marina’s house in upstate New York, as being very connected. Of course, the thing or person in the center of that constellation is you.
Marina: You have to have an incredible amount of humor, first about yourself and then about everything else. Humor is necessary in our life, I feel, especially now, in this time we are living. The lesson is to have humor and to enjoy every day of life. You never know when things will change, you need to live in the present. A catastrophe can happen any second. I mean, I was thinking now, while we are sitting here, what if an asteroid falls on this planet, and we are all gone? Every day is the last day, and every moment is the only moment in existence.
[continue]
Rein Wolfs: How do we see the humor in the work? Or how do we receive the humor?
Marina: There’s not too much, but I’m getting better. My new piece is going to be so much fun, because I feel happier than ever before. Some great artists have had a terrible life, yet incredible happiness, and their work is really about teaching and comes out as a transcendental knowledge. But then what do you do if you’re happy? Happiness is a state of mind, and you don’t want to change and you’re just happy, you don’t want to work, you don’t do anything. Now I’m happy and I start working for my happiness. It could be terrible, but we don’t know. You will see next year.
Rein Wolfs: You are probably representative of a generation of artists who are post-romantic, which can be happy. But the romantic conception is also one of unhappiness.
Marina: I come from the Balkans. We are always unhappy. We have the drama. If you leave your country, you are unhappy because you left it. Then, when you are in a foreign country, you’re unhappy because you’re not in your country. This melancholy creates great works of art, such as poetry, film, literature, and more.
Rein Wolfs: Back then, you left for Amsterdam, and we have some works in the exhibition that specifically deal with your feelings about Amsterdam. What was your impression of Amsterdam when you came here in 1975?
Marina: I came from something where everything was forbidden. I could not walk in the street, I was criticized, or they wanted to put me in a mental hospital. My mother and father were criticized at party meetings. Professors were saying that my art is disgusting and that it is not art. If I read the critics of the day, I would not even leave the house. I was really pushing all these limits and going over borders, which made me quite strong.
Then I came to Amsterdam. Everything was free here. We’re talking about the 1970s, when people were walking naked in the streets. So, I didn’t know what to do, because all the political and social restrictions in my home country did not function here, because everything was possible. This was not easy. I had to create my own new restrictions, and all the new rules, in order to create new work. It was actually quite a difficult moment, that decision, and the freedom was fascinating.
Rein Wolfs: Then you came with this work, The Role Exchange, which has a specific focus here in the show at Stedelijk. You also made a new way of showing it here, with a voiceover.
Marina: Yes, I did, but that was interesting. I came to Amsterdam, coming from communism, and here you see the working girls in the windows—I never saw that in my life. I said, “What I can do is, I’m going to change roles immediately with them, because it’s something I’m afraid of.” I always do things I’m afraid of. I found a woman who had been a professional sex worker for twelve years, and I’d spent twelve years as a professional artist. I said to her, “Go sit in the gallery and be me,” and I went to sit in the window and be her. This was so frightening to do. This was something completely against my rules, my education, my everything. This was a very strong experience. We don’t have time to tell you all about it, but people can see the video.
Marina Abramović, Everything Will be Light.
Marina: Sometimes you make work and it is not really clear why you’re making it. After seeing this film now, I can understand how it is connected to my Portal. This is the first sculpture that you see when you come into the show, and you go through it. Ulay died four years ago, and I had an experience with nearly dying last year, because of an embolism. The only thing that I was thinking was that, actually, dying is not going to darkness, dying is going through the light. It’s so interesting that we made this as a dream, that we are giving light and then become just bleached into the lightness, which is connected directly to me now, and to the work.
Karen Archey: I was just thinking about how you made this work when you were 35, and I found it really interesting that you’d already made a work about death at that age. Do you see that as a recurring theme throughout your work?
Marina: Always. I started thinking about dying when I was seventeen. I remember it was snowing and I was in Belgrade, and I was listening to Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 21. I looked at the snow outside, and I just kept kind of realizing for the first time in my life, “Oh my God, I’m going to die.” This was the first time that the notion of death came to me, and actually never left me.
