Walk Through Walls: A Memoir

Product Information

The book is filled with photos. There are some obligatory color photos of colleagues, but the highlights are the many B & W that help the reader envision the work. Therefor overall I feel this was a 3,5 stars book for me and a definite recommended read for anyone interested in modern art! Per i primi tre mesi piazzo ogni studente davanti a un tavolo, con sopra mille fogli bianchi e, sotto, un cestino. Ogni giorno devono stare lì e scrivere le loro idee. Le idee che gradiscono le mettono sul lato destro del tavolo; quelle che non gradiscono le buttano nel cestino. Ma il cestino non viene mai svuotato.

But it feels strange to be happy? Yes! We are living in the strangest period of human history. We are ending this year with two wars: in Ukraine and Israel. Then there are natural disasters. Things are not getting better. We have to understand that the only reality we have is living every day as if it’s the last. Which is also the philosophy of performance: to be in the moment. How important are we? We are dust. I was also thinking how interesting it is that in war, when everybody was making art that reflected what happened, Henri Matisse was painting flowers. I finally understand that. The way to fight is not to reflect horror and put your spirit down. It’s to create something with beauty that gives you hope. So avant garde how what she did in the 80's and 90's in a diluted form is now common place in our society.

Toen ik verleden week, in de kerstperiode van 2017, op een afgelegen plek de rust opzocht en in het boek begon, besloot Marina al snel mij een paar meppen te geven. Ze vertelt (samen met ghostwriter James Kaplan) haar persoonlijke verhaal. Bij zo’n autobiografie moet je natuurlijk op je hoede zijn. Er zijn geen ouders, geliefden, kunstkenners in de buurt die haar kunnen onderbreken om één en ander te nuanceren. I had experienced absolute freedom—I had felt that my body was without boundaries, limitless; that pain didn’t matter, that nothing mattered at all—and it intoxicated me.” It is extremely rare for me to say that I was better off not knowing something. This is one of those moments. I have been an admirer of Marina Abramovic’s work for many years. The depth and originality of her concepts amazes me, and the emotional intensity moves me very deeply. My exposure to her work was only through videos and descriptions. Finally I got to see her in 2015, at a TED meeting in Vancouver, and my admiration for her peaked as I saw her perform, which involved each of the two thousand attendees at the conference. We have meetings with Rem Koolhaas, Susan Sontag, the Dalai Lama, the artistic lead of Givenchy, other artists, Lady Gaga, TED talks ( https://www.ted.com/talks/marina_abra...).

Until you understand her childhood and youth you might question how Marina Abramavic, who pioneered performance art, came from Tito’s drab grey Yugoslavia. While physically and emotionally abused by her parents, she did not live in a tiny flat with 20 relatives and was not deprived of the outside world or art. Her parents' connections helped, but she achieved on her own and her own terms. The exhibition revisits Abramovic's artistic legacy through sculpture, video, installation and performance. Different works arere-staged through video archive footage; others are reperformed by a new generation of artists. 'Absolute freedom' through performance Paprastas, patrauklus pasakojimo stilius, BET ŠAKĖS KIEK DAUG tokio second-hand new-age dvasingumo.Titled "Rhythm 10,"Abramovic thrust 10sharp knives between her splayed fingers — a daredevil act in which she occasionally missed and drew blood. In Edinburgh, wherethe young artist and occasional painter met iconic Germanperformance artist Joseph Beuys, she also realized she had found her medium. Ik weet inmiddels dat geen enkele houding prettiger is dan een andere. Zelfs de prettigste houding wordt na een tijdje ondragelijk. About 10 years ago I saw the theater production “the life and death of Marina Abramovic”, a production by Bob Wilson, starring Marina Abramovic herself and Willem Dafoe. And that still is one of the most imaginative visual spectacles I have ever seen. So, this autobiography has been on my want-to-read list for a long time. Reading it has clarified quite a bit, especially her sheltered childhood in a “Red Bourgeois” environment in what is now Serbia (then Tito's Yugoslavia) and her eternal obsession with getting love and attention from her very cold mother. A psychologist/psychiatrist can probably explain perfectly why Abramovic always pushed the physical and mental boundaries in her artistic performances, even to the point of masochism, and explicitly went on an exhibitionistic tour. Her ‘performance art’ is not my genre, I must admit, but it remains intriguing. Her art is physical and demanding. It requires concentration, determination and endurance. Both her parents were brave and heroic partisans in WWII and she believes they passed on to her the steely commitment needed to “walk through walls”. The objects included razor blades, knives and a loaded gun.The artist sat motionless as people cut open her clothes or slashed her skin. One person aimed the loaded gun at herhead. "If you leave it up to the audience, they can kill you," Abramovic said after the performance in which she sought to expose an inherent human cruelty.