of the conversations, which I only realised to my horror later. However, everything Marina spoke about remained in my living memo- ry, especially her charisma, the likes of which one rarely encounters. It was with that same charisma that she charmed the mostly young audience at the lecture, so applause could often be heard resounding around the park at Ušće, the con uence. Impatiente to express everything she had to say, Marina wanted to explain the cir- cumstances in which her art emerged – fam- ily, personal and social circumstances. She was born in 1946 to Partizan parents Dani- ca and Vojin, while her great-uncle was Ser- bian Patriarch Varnava. Considering that her parents were preoccupied with their own ca- reers, Marina was raised by her grandmother, who took her to church, which was contrary to the communist rules of the time. “I watched how believers entering the temple dipped their ngers in the bowl with holy water before crossing themselves. It then occurred to me that I would become a saint if I drank all that water,”said Marina, laughing at her former self. She drank that water in se- cret and didn’t become holy, but rather fell ill. She expressed her de ance of her strict mother by painting her room with black shoe polish, which resulted in her receiving a harsh beating. A childhood without tenderness or words of praise made Marina steely and pro- vided the foundations of her desire to become an artist. “I chose performance art because it provides the closest contact with the au- dience,” she told me at the Majestic at that time, and to me that meant that she’d re- mained forever desiring love. She revealed to the audience at Ušće that this little room was also her rst studio, de- scribing her rst painting lesson. A friend of her father, the painter Filo Filipović, brought some straw, glue, oil paints and turpentine, placed it all on a sheet paper and then set it on re.“He told me‘this is a sunset’and left”. This dramatic artistic act remained etched in the memory of the then 14-year-old girl. And taught her that the process is more im- portant than the results. In a desire to convey to the local audi- encetheEasternphilosophyshehadadopted, with solitude and daily meditation, Marina of- fered a kind of workshop in the scope of the setting. She placed a pile of black and white rice in the middle of a long table, for visitors to separate and count the grains. And then she returned both piles to the original heap, conquering peace at least brie y. Western in uence left too deep a mark on me personally, so I was more intrigued by the second performance, called Direct Con- tact. Standing at the entrance to one seg- ment of the exhibition were a naked girl and a young man, whom you had to touch in
tija njihovih žena, tamo se razvijao novi vid umetnosti, konceptualan. Iz tog perioda najpoznatiji je Marinin performans Ritam 5 , u kojem je le- gla u zapaljenu petokraku i zamalo se ugušila. „Onesvestila sam se od dima i plamen je već bio zahvatio no- gu kad je reagovao jedan lekar iz pu- blike“, otkrila je Marina svoju žrtvu zarad razračunavanja sa istorijom. Opšte je poznat i rad Ritam 0 , koji je naša zvezda izvela u Napu- lju ponudivši posetiocima galerije 72 predmeta da njima na njoj rade sve što požele. Isprva stegnuti, tokom šest časova, oni su bili sve razuzda- niji. „Sekli su mi odeću, povređivali me žiletom, stavljali mi pištolj u ša- ku da vide da li ću smeti da pucam u sebe“, pričala je Marina. Da bi sve to emotivno preživela, anestezirala je svoju svest. Po završetku performansa publi- ka se razbežala. „Niko nije hteo da sa mnom krvavom i polugolom komu- nicira“, što je Marini palo teško. Ali je nama ostavila da razlučimo da li su se posetioci postideli svojih po- stupaka ili izašli iz transa, baš kao i ona. Tada je odlučila da nadalje pro- vocira samo pozitivne emocije, a svoj život više ne rizikuje. Ipak je i dalje težila ekstremi- ma izdržljivosti, pa su ona i Ulaj u jednom radu satima jedno drugom upućivali kritike. U želji da i mi ose- timo deo energije performansa Ma- rina nam je zadala vežbicu, da pu- stimo glas iz sve snage. Nisam se štedela, pa sam se na kraju raspla- kala. Šta se sa njima desilo tokom i posle višečasovnog urlanja, nisam mogla ni da pretpostavim.
T he fact that the world’s top star of performance art, Marina Abramov- ić, was born and raised in the capi- tal of Serbia – thenYugoslavia – de- termined her life and career. That’s because “The Balkans is a bridge between East and West, and winds always blow across bridg- es that one has to resist,”she said, explaining why she has such radicalism, dedication and aspirationstopushtheboundariesthat“com- pel an artist to top quality in what they do”. And the very opportunity to express this was special. Marina held the lecture under the auspices of the retrospective exhibition “TheCleaner”attheMuseumofContempo- rary Art in Belgrade, addressing thousands of visitors“who’d never experienced a single artist before,”as she pointed out jubilantly. I, on the other hand, was among the few who had the good fortune to converse personal- ly with the artist. That was 15 years ago, when she came to Belgrade to donate 20,000 dollars to the Nikola Tesla Museum in order to digitise the legacy of this genius of science. I saw her at the premiere of some forgotten play at the YugoslavDramaTheatreandcouldn’tbelieve at rst that it was her. That’s because she was dressed modestly, in simple espadrille at shoes – not the way stars look according to most people’s beliefs, mine included. I interviewed her for a full three hours at Belgrade’s Majestic Hotel, where she was stay- ing, but technology conspired against me: my dictaphone didn’t record even a tenth
| 53
Made with FlippingBook interactive PDF creator