Quotes from Marina Abramovi?

The perception is that an artist has to suffer. I've suffered enough in my lifetime.

When I asked [her maternal grandmother that lived to the age of 103] what she remembered about the First and Second World Wars, she told me the following: "Germans are very correct. The Italians always look for a piano and want to make a party. But when the Russians come, everyone runs away because they rape all the women, young and old alike.

To a certain degree my idea was motivated by indignation. Performance material and images were constantly being stolen and put into the context of fashion, advertising, MTV, Hollywood films, theater, etc.: it was unprotected territory. I strongly felt that when anybody takes an idea of intellectual or artistic value from someone else, they should do so only with permission. To do otherwise is to commit piracy.

I'm only interested in an art which can change the ideology of society....Art which is only committed to aesthetic values is incomplete.

This was an important trip for me. Twelve artists in all were there, including several I admired—Laurie Anderson, John Cage, Chris Burden, Brice Marden, Joan Jonas, and Pat Steir—and

You think you're disconnected. But the question is, what are you disconnected from? You're actually constantly disconnecting from yourself by having all these things.

Kelion?se išlieki jaunas, nes neturi kada senti.

Once, Picasso was asked what his paintings meant. He said, "Do you ever know what the birds are singing? You don't. But you listen to them anyway." So, sometimes with art, it is important just to look.

It is incredible how fear is built into you, by your parents and others surrounding you. You're so innocent in the beginning; you don't know.

Because in the end you are really alone, whatever you do.

The hardest thing is to do something which is close to nothing because it is demanding all of you.

What you're doing is not important. What is really important is the state of mind from which you do it. Performance

If you're a woman, it's almost impossible to establish a relationship. You're too much for everybody. It's too much. The woman always has to play this role of being fragile and dependent. And if you're not, they'are fascinated by you, but only for a little while. And then they want to change you and crush you. And then they leave. So, lots of lonely hotel rooms, my dear.

If you experiment, you have to fail. By definition, experimenting means going to territory where you've never been, where failure is very possible. How can you know you're going to succeed? Having the courage to face the unknown is so important. I

People have so much pain inside them that they're not even aware of.

I always question artists who are successful in whatever they do—I think what that means is that they're repeating themselves and not taking enough risks.

Some couples buy pots and pans when they move in together. Ulay and I began planning how to make art together.

Art is not just about another beautiful painting that matches your dining room floor. Art has to be disturbing, art has to ask a question, art has to predict the future.

It taught me that the process was more important than the result, just as the performance means more to me than the object. I saw the process of making it and then the process of its unmaking. There was no duration or stability to it. It was pure process. Later on I read—and loved—the Yves Klein quote: "My paintings are but the ashes of my art.

Time is an illusion. Time only exists when we think about the past and the future. Time doesn't exist in the present here and now

I came to believe in the idea of parallel realities. I think that the reality we see now is a certain frequency, and that we're all on the same frequency, so we're visible to each other, but that it's possible to change frequencies. To enter a different reality. And I think that there are hundreds of these realities.

Human beings are afraid of very simple things: we fear suffering, we fear mortality. What I was doing in Rhythm 0—as in all my other performances—was staging these fears for the audience: using their energy to push my body as far as possible. In the process, I liberated myself from my fears. And as this happened, I became a mirror for the audience—if I could do it, they could do it, too.

Then I woke up and the reality of the dream was stronger than the reality of the day.

Sometimes people are ashamed to talk about these things, but I know so many people who would never throw away their old shitty T-shirts or pullovers that are falling apart because of the comfort they get from those clothes. Everybody is vulnerable.