Spectrum: Art has to disturb, lift spirit: Marina Abramovic’s rousing call

Fearless. That’s what strikes you about Serbian performance artist Marina Abramovic as she shares her experiences in Kochi as part of her media interaction and lecture, ‘The Past, Present and Future of Performance Art’, at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale’s cultural programme. India’s first contemporary art biennale is now in its sixth edition and Abramovic’s work, ‘The Waterfall’, is being showcased here, as is a work from the Marina Abramovic Institute.Abramovic’s lecture opened to a packed hall in Willingdon Island, which seated over 1,000 people. Marina, whose work explores body and endurance art and the relationship between performer and audience, is a fierce proponent of being in the present, creating from a space of spirituality and of giving every fibre of being to what you believe in. “Hundred per cent is not enough,” she says with the conviction of a performance art career spanning 62 years. “You give your entire energy to something you believe in. Then you come to the point that you can’t do more. And then miracles happen. Performance is exactly the same thing.”But performance is not what she started her art journey with. She was 14 when she had her first painting exhibition. “I was always so jealous of Mozart. Because he started at age four,” she says, chuckling. She started with painting her dreams, and then, one day, decided to turn to nature. She went out to the country to look at the sky and paint clouds. She heard the roar of airplanes, and an epiphany struck. “I thought, why should I go to my studio and do something two-dimensional when I can actually use everything. I can use the sky, I can use the body, I can use the fire. I can make art out of dust, if I want.”The spunky teen went to the military base. “I asked them if they could give me a plane to make drawings?” she reminisces. “They called my father [a General and decorated war hero] and said, ‘Your daughter is crazy, get her out of here, immediately.’ I could not do that but from that point, performance was born. I knew it was my medium.”For the 79-year-old artist, art is insignificant if it does not reflect the truth. “I don’t care whether my art is beautiful or ugly, but it must be true,” she says. “People think that a beautiful painting has to match the carpet in their living room. That’s not what art is about. Art has to be disturbing. Art has to predict the future. Art has to show the way, and art has to lift the human spirit.” The artist herself did not shy away from speaking her truth when questioned about her name being mentioned in the Epstein files. [The artist’s name turns up in emails between American writer John Brockman and Epstein, where Brockman praises her work and describes a meeting with her.] Abramovic went on to speak extensively about how this random mention has sparked renewed interest in the 2016 conspiracy theory popularly dubbed Pizzagate, and how her practice of ‘spirit cooking’ has been falsely linked to black magic practices.She repeatedly speaks about drawing inspiration from spiritual practices and nature. Abramovic, who has been coming to India since 1979, is greatly moved by the country’s ancient wisdom and refers to the country as ‘the big mother of our planet’. However, she is also disillusioned by the way the country is moving away from its own heritage in the pursuit of western cultural practices, including the rampant adoption of AI. Though her own work features a lot of nudity, she made a conscious decision not to bring that to India, saying she is deeply disturbed by how everything is now perceived through a lens of pornography.“We’re in the most strange moment of human history right now,” she says. “So much shit [sic] is happening around us and I really think the voice of an artist is important.” Abramovic’s lecture touched upon many greats in the history of performance art, including her mentor, Tehching Hsieh, whose long-duration performance art has surpassed her own in terms of length and intensity.Nikhil Chopra, curator of this edition of the biennale, refers to Abramovic in his introduction as ‘art history itself’. “Her body is her archive, 62 years of hard work,” he says. And now, Abramovic is in the next stage of her artistic journey, of not only being the creator, medium and part of the creation, but also of enabling the audience to experience their own journeys through art. “How do you know you’re an artist?” she asks. “It’s like breathing. You have to breathe, otherwise you die. If you wake up and you have an idea, and you have to do it, you’re an artist. ”— The writer is a freelance contributor

Spectrum: Art has to disturb, lift spirit: Marina Abramovic’s rousing call

The artist was at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale for a lecture, ‘The Past, Present and Future of Performance Art’.

Sumi Thomas

Spectrum: Art has to disturb, lift spirit: Marina Abramovic’s rousing call

The artist was at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale for a lecture, ‘The Past, Present and Future of Performance Art’.

Sumi Thomas

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