Marina Abramović, Portrait with Firewood, 2009. Photo: Marco Anelli. © 2010 Marina Abramovic. Courtesy of artist and Sean Kelly Gallery/ARS, New York.

Written by Henri J Sandront

Last week was quite “Marina Abramović-filled” here in Amsterdam. The artist offered a quasi week-long program to the city where she lived for over 25 years (amongst which 7 years illegally). For Blend.nl I managed to snatch an exclusive interview of the self-proclaimed grandmother of performance art.

Born in what used to be Yugoslavia, Marina (let’s keep it casual) fled to the Netherlands in 1976 and later successfully went through the process of obtaining a Dutch passport, after learning by heart a text in Dutch translated in Serbian phonetics. “I came in and said ‘Ik ben Marina Abramović’. They laughed so much and made me promise to learn Dutch.”

From Rijksmuseum to the Stedelijk, “I have performed everywhere in Amsterdam,” she says. In fact, Amsterdam is where the artist performed for the first time with her (ex) long time partner Ulay. Marina also chose Amsterdam as host to one of her funerals. However, according to her wishes, there will be simultaneously three coffins in three different cities (New York, Belgrade, Amsterdam) for one undisclosed body of the artist.

Marina Abramović and Ulay. Relation in Time. Originally performed in 1977 for 17 hours at Studio G7, Bologna. © 2010 Marina Abramovic. Courtesy of artist and Sean Kelly Gallery/ARS, New York. 

Though she spent a great deal of her life in the Dutch capital, Marina could not enlighten me much about her favorite night spots. “I am not a night life kind of person, I am a morning person,” she confesses. She mentions De Kooning van Siam as one of her most-visited restaurants and declares her love to Hema and Brinta, “best baby food”.

The HBO documentary The Artist is Present had its Dutch premiere at the newly built Eye Film Institute in the North of Amsterdam. For this (sold-out) occasion, Bart Rutten from the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and Gaby Wijers from the Netherlands Film Institute held a lecture which shed the light on the different issues relating to the conservation of the work of Marina Abramović.

Marina Abramović’s career has been driven by her strong will to take performance art out of marginality. While the HBO documentary (see trailer) won’t bring many never-heard-of elements to the ears and eyes of Abramović’s aficionados, it does get the credit for making the medium of performance art available and enjoyable to a larger audience than ever before. Needless to say that HBO played it right: with countless footages of her Manhattan downtown condo and numerous shots of tearful people sitting in front of Marina’s intense gaze at MoMA (which brought the lady sitting next to me to tears).

Marina Abramović, The Artist Is Present. Photo by Marco Anelli. © 2010 Marco Anelli.

As she puts it, when it comes to performance art “people often think ‘this is bullshit’ and walk away”. “During my retrospective at the MoMA, the film crew had the keys of my apartment and often came in the morning before I woke up”.  “I think it is necessary for the public to understand how much it takes to realize performance art,” she insists.

Marina believes that “art should not accommodate to the public”, in fact “art should be longer and longer”. The documentary is probably a way to prepare the audience for a new, more enduring experience. With her upcoming performance art center set to open in 2014 in Hudson, US, the artist intends to make people sign a contract to spend 5 to 6 hours in a room with her without leaving. Those who succeed would get some sort of certificate. “Give me time and I give you experience,” she claims.

Marina Abramović, Balkan Baroque I June, 1997. © Marina Abramovic. Courtesy Marina Abramović Archives and Sean Kelly Gallery/ARS, New York.

Together with singer Antony Hegarty (from Antony and the Johnsons), actor Willem Dafoe and other cast members, Marina Abramović ended her Amsterdam week on the stage of Carré with three extravagant (and once again sold-out) shows of the “opera” The Life and Death of Marina Abramović for the Holland Festival. Directed by Robert Wilson, the play is constructed in the form of successive highly aesthetic tableaux which narrate the childhood and life of the artist. How does artist address the difference between a stage and a gallery space? “This is theater, not performance,” she stresses. “Theater is artificial. When I cut myself in performances, it’s real”. In theater as much as in performance art, “the audience is a pulse”.  “At MoMA the public was taken as individuals”, in the context of a theater play “it is a different relation but the energy is the same.”

The artist is currently in Antwerp, set to hit the stage of De Single theater. In between rehearsals, Marina is feeding her hunger for high fashion exactly where the infamous Antwerp Six began. “I went to Dries van Noten for his perfect white shirts and I am going to Ann Demeulemeester”.

Marina is a fervent fashion-monger. She values simplicity and originality in fashion. As soon as her career took off, she started wearing Margiela and Yamamoto. She now only swears by Costume National footwear and particularly appreciates the creations of her friend Riccardo Tisci. “I like the way he deals with women. His fashion makes me feel empowered, not like a vulgar object.”

Marina Abramović is wrapping her euro-tour. She sounds relieved, “I will have my first holiday for a long time on July 1st”. Next year the play will tour in North America. Marina Abramović is already thinking of a way to perpetuate the Wilson’s piece.  “I would like to be replaced”. “Charlotte Rampling would be perfect,” she adds. “Willem is irreplaceable and it would be quite impossible to replace Antony”. She pauses. “Maybe we need to use holograms.”