Metronome

Rhythm 0

The Hero

Balkan Baroque

Balkan Erotic Epic

Seven Easy Pieces

Lips of Thomas

The Artist Is Present

Richard Kern: Where to start? Um, [to Jesse] you really want me to start?

Marina Abramović:

OK, OK. How did you get out of Yugoslavia?

Body Art

But didn’t you have to get permission to leave?

Jesse Pearson: Tito was an angel compared with Milošević.

Richard: It seems to me that performance art gained momentum and recognition as a movement in the early 70s. That’s when it really started picking up. That’s when I was in school, when, you, Chris Burden, and Vito Acconci started doing more—

Yeah, more radical things. In Yugoslavia, were you aware of those other people? Did the art scene in Yugoslavia at that time have international connections?

Trans-Fixed

Jesse: It’s interesting that the stories you were hearing, because of that game of telephone, were making the pieces sound even more extreme than they were in reality.

Richard: I noticed in the show at MoMA that in the knife piece—it’s Rhythm 10, I think—the documentation is just a scratched-out print. Did you realize the importance of documentation from the beginning?

I liked it that way. I was in college in the 70s, and they were teaching us, immediately, to document everything. By that time, everything was to be documented.

Jesse: I’ve read about how your mother, when you were growing up, had a regimented, disciplinarian way with lists of words you had to learn and lists of things you had to eat. Did you carry that through into your adult life?

laughs

So it’s ingrained?

People end up becoming a lot like their parents even if they felt rebellious when they were kids.

gesturing to the monk in the other room

Rinpoche?

Richard: With body art, the original idea is that it exists only in the moment in which it happens. You cannot buy it. But then, over the years, everyone has had to make a living, so they’ve sold their artifacts.

Not artifacts, but photographs.

Did the idea that you’d be making and selling photos start to influence the style of the documentation—to lead you to make the photographs more beautiful?

Seven Easy Pieces

flips through a book of her work

Lips of Thomas

Jesse: That’s a rough one. You eat honey and drink wine, and then you carve a five-pointed star into your stomach with a razor, whip yourself violently, and then lie down on a cross that’s made of ice while a heater just over your midsection keeps the star bleeding.

Richard: Right.

So the ones that are staged for the photographer are the ones that you sell?

Jesse: But when it’s done for that purpose alone, you’re still kind of accessing the headspace and really doing the performance for them?

Richard: But much attention is given to lighting, and it’s more theatrical. I’m just curious, because this was always the dilemma for performance art. Is it only pure art when there’s no finance attached to it?

You can do whatever you want.

Regarding your collaborations with Ulay, how long did it take for your two artistic egos to clash?

OK. [laughs] Oh, wait, I don’t mean how long did it take for you guys to hook up, but how long did it take before there was a clash?

No, I mean a clash between your egos. Was there a lot of arguing?

Jesse: Not until the sex got bad.

laughs

But at the start…

Because you were that.

Richard: How did that go?

Jesse: This chunk of your past back, yeah.

But you were able to buy all the rights back from him?

So we’re talking about stuff that he got, and then you got it back.

At this point, Richard leaves to get his cameras set up while Marina and Jesse continue to talk

Jesse: You talk about energy fields a lot.

The Artist Is Present

So energy to you is sort of like life force.

It’s interesting that for a lot of people, and maybe people especially in New York City, you have to set aside a separate zone to stop and experience what we’re talking about in terms of energy.

It was like a venue that was given to experience these kinds of things.

The line often ran around the block, like at a rock concert.

And that’s something you’ve thought a lot about in your work, right? The present.

The Artist Is Present

Nightsea Crossing

I’m thinking of a very early piece of yours—the metronomes spread throughout four or five rooms. That’s a piece that was very much about being aware of time. Where do you think your interest in the passing of time and the present come from?

What you said a minute ago, about people who don’t know much art theory coming upon your work at MoMA—that’s great. Any chance to welcome people from outside the art-world circle jerk into the actual experience of looking at art should be taken.

It’s like a zoo for art.

It’s interesting to hear that coming from a former communist. Groupthink was very important to the communist ethos, at least as practiced in Eastern Europe before the various collapses.

laughs

A literal black sheep.

This zoo analogy, where the art is trapped like a sad animal—

Especially at art fairs. And you mentioned theory too. Do you find an exclusivity to the art world? The academic nature of the way people inside it talk to each other, along with the insane amounts of money that travel back and forth in it, lead to not a lot of entry points for the average citizen.

The extreme price is actually an important part of the piece.

laughs

Drill like in boot camp?

Right. It’s also been referred to as “Marina Abramović Presents…”

Do you think that kind of stuff needs to happen outside of institutions like MoMA? Sort of in more populist places?

Is this the thing that you’re doing in Hudson, New York?

I think I know the building you’re talking about. When does it start and what will happen there?

Like a prefabricated life.

This part of the Hudson Valley is sort of an epicenter of art life outside the city. So, I was really excited when I was reading the catalog from the MoMA show and I saw that you’d selected a text by Alexandra David-Néel. I love her. I think she was amazing.

So good. And the photos of Alexandra David-Néel in her Tibetan-explorer gear. How did you discover her?

Did you identify with her? Did you take inspiration from her?

Sloppy seconds.

There’s a lot of power there.

It’s embedded in the rock.

And what about us?

We made technology into a crutch.

It seems like through your work you can tap into some of it, though.

Is the danger and pain in your work a means to amplify the present?

Yeah, and physical pain is sort of tangible. Psychic pain is kind of abstract and harder to confront, right?

You’ve said that around 1989, you felt the need for change, for laughter, pleasure, and glamour.

Oh, is this the celebration? The closing reception for the MoMA show? Yeah. You looked very glamorous.

How do you feel in stuff like that?

Just for those who don’t know, this was your final piece with Ulay. You each started at one end of the Great Wall and then walked until you met each other.

You do come off as very much an ascetic in your work.

I’ve often thought that artists who like to be seen as working class just feel defensive about having art as a career. Let’s talk a little about The Artist Is Present. How did you feel at the moment it ended?

Yes.

The ovation lasted for like 15 minutes.

gasp

When somebody would start to cry while sitting with you, what would be going on inside your head?

There’s a lot of inner turmoil going on in New York, yeah.

Looking strangers directly in the eyes is usually seen as some kind of a challenge. It’s like the animal kingdom, like dogs locking eyes with each other.

There’s also this idea of a staring contest.

That’s incredible.

Right, that’s what I got the day that I was there. A woman was sitting with you. She was dressed in these clothes that were just like yours, but they were black instead of white. She had her hair done like yours too. I thought it was kind of goofy. And then she stayed there for hours. I thought, “I’d be angry if I were waiting behind her.” But then I realized that, of course, that’s part of it.

Do you think that will fade?

Do you remember the woman I was just talking about?

The Seventh Seal.

Max von Sydow playing chess with Death, yeah.

That’s something I was going to ask you about. I wondered if issues of mortality had anything to do with you thinking about time so much in your work.

How do you mean?

Give me some names.

People will need to do their own research.

You’ve got a ways to go.