Quote

In every culture, [there are those] shamans or medicine men who endured incredible physical pain, because it's a door opening to the subconsciousness. And the way we can actually control the pain -- it's how to control everything. This is the key.

Marina Abramovic

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Marina Abramovic
Age: 77
Born: 1946
Born: November 30
Artist
Film Director
Film Producer
Performance Artist
Performing Artist
Photographer
Photojournalist
Scenographer
Sculptor
Sound Artist
Belgrade
Serbia
Marina Abramovic
Marina Abramoviæ
Marina Abramovicz
M. Abramovic
Every
Keys
Way
Physical
Men
Doors
Shamans
Control
Endured
Actually
Incredible
Pain
Opening
Culture
Medicine
Everything
Door

More quotes by Marina Abramovic

Image
It's very important that young artists push boundaries, because sometimes you have this urge to do something - like the impulsive and dangerous urges I had as a child - and if you don't follow through with it you might miss out on a developmental experience.
Marina Abramovic
Image
I had so much fear of blood, and the first thing I did was to cut myself to see what happens. That's the only way to rebuild yourself.
Marina Abramovic
Image
When you have so much pain, you think you will lose consciousness. If you say to yourself, ‘So what, lose consciousness,’ the pain goes away.
Marina Abramovic
Image
Television is completely another medium. For me, Lady Gaga and HBO are bringing us to mass culture.
Marina Abramovic
Image
My work is immaterial. It's not painting, it's not sculpture, it's emotions. I'm giving you something to experience yourself.
Marina Abramovic
Image
Western culture has more need because they're so much more degenerated. They're so much more hurt, and misbalanced completely.
Marina Abramovic
Image
You know, art is very emotional business. But mostly it becomes not emotional, the fabric of commodity. It becomes business. It becomes so many different things. Because we forgot there was emotions involved.
Marina Abramovic
Image
Once you live in New York, you can't live anywhere else. Living in Paris is like going in slow motion. It's so bourgeois. I get so bored.
Marina Abramovic
Image
When I did Seven Easy Pieces, I actually re-performed the performances of other artists. It was such difficult work because I had to really go through the documentation, look through the sources, to ask the witnesses who saw it.
Marina Abramovic
Image
I've always asked myself since I was young, what is my duty on this planet? What am I there for? Just to hang around? Everybody must have some purpose.
Marina Abramovic
Image
I think if people raise their consciousness and find a purpose, everybody will be helped.
Marina Abramovic
Image
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.
Marina Abramovic
Image
I didn't give any instruction to the video, because it was a new medium. I didn't know what to tell him it was so young. I did the piece and immediately after the piece, I wanted to see the material.
Marina Abramovic
Image
I don't know anything about the afterlife because I haven't been there yet.
Marina Abramovic
Image
I'm interested in utopian communities of the past. Many of them didn't survive and I'm examining closely the reasons they failed.
Marina Abramovic
Image
I made a tape recording of a bridge collapsing and I wanted to play it suddenly and very loudly when people were walking over a big bridge in Belgrade. The council forbid it. Their imagination is tiny mine is big. I want always to shake everything up.
Marina Abramovic
Image
Zooming in, zooming out. I was shocked. I said, Let's erase this right now, put the camera behind the stage and I'll do the performance just for the camera. He set up everything and I told him to go outside and smoke a cigarette. Come back when I finish. Don't touch the camera. This was the way how I've done most everything after that.
Marina Abramovic
Image
You know, everyone is always talking about plastic surgery, or the technology, what to do. I really think it's important to help yourself with the technology if you want to feel better, but I am absolutely against any kind of monstrous cuts of the body, lifting that is beyond recognition, this kind of stuff.
Marina Abramovic
Image
Art comes from life, not from the studio
Marina Abramovic
Image
Every party is the same, too many people, too little food, and you have to wait around. I'm extremely bored with parties.
Marina Abramovic