Who is Marina Abramovic

A. Marina Abramovic has described herself as 'the grandmother of performance artists'. She was born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, in 1946, and started performing her pieces in the late 1960s. Her early performances were a form of rebellion against a strict upbringing as well as against the repressive nature of Yugoslavia under Tito. In her performances she tests the boundaries of physical and mental endurance. She has, among other things, lacerated herself, flagellated herself, frozen her body on ice, taken mind- and muscle-controlling drugs that have caused her to fall unconscious and almost died from asphyxiation while lying within a curtain of oxygen-devouring flames.

�

Q. Why
A. She seeks to identify and define the limits of her body's endurance and to exercise control over it. She also tests the audience's - and by extension society's - nerve by seeing how much they can stand. She has said that she's 'interested in art that disturbs and that pushes the moment of danger. Let the danger focus you; this is the whole idea - to put you in the focus of now.'

�

By testing the limits to which an audience will watch pain or danger, she creates a tension that involves the spectator intimately in the event, thus becoming part of the performance, rather than a mere onlooker. Sometimes her profoundly disturbing pieces only end when a member of the audience intervenes. Her long-term goal is to liberate society through art.

�

Q. Does anyone else do this
A. She was not alone in the 1970s, when performance art was at its height. For 20 years from 1975 she worked with another artist named Ulay, who shared her date of birth as well as her artistic concerns. Their performances explored the parameters of power and dependency within the three-way relationship between each other and the audience.

�

Q. What projects has Abramovic undertaken
A. A few of the more notable are:
Breathing In/Breathing Out (1977) when Abramovic and Ulay clamped their mouths together tightly, attached microphones to their throats and breathed in turn the air from each other's lungs, until - almost to the point of suffocation - they were exchanging only carbon dioxide.

Rest Energy (1980), in which she and Ulay held a taut bow with an arrow loaded and pointing at Abramovic's heart, only the weight of their bodies maintaining the tension, while microphones recorded their heartbeats.
The Great Wall Walk (1988), had Abramovic and Ulay each walking 2,000 km along the Great Wall of China, starting at opposite ends and meeting in the middle.

�

Q. Is she still performing
A. Yes. She currently lives in Amsterdam and is the most active of all that generation of 1970s artists, and certainly the most successful. Videos and stills of her work are regularly exhibited and can be bought. In 1997 she received the Golden Lion Award for Best Artist at the prestigious Venice Biennale. If you want to find out more, there's an interview with her in the Summer 1999 edition of The Art Journal http://www.collegeart.org/caa/publications/AJ/artjournal.html

�

To ask more Art & Literature questions click here

�

By Simon Smith