Celebrated performance artist Marina Abramović stated that she is proud of the student rebellion in Serbia and that she always cries when she watches their demonstrations, calling them “the heroes of today.”
“I am very, very proud of the students, of their rebellion. I wrote on my social media profiles, including Instagram and Facebook, that the students in Serbia are the heroes of today. They are strong, fantastic, incredible… Their demonstrations, their gestures carry such power, and at the same time peacefulness. Bright, determined, quick-witted, they completely open their hearts to everyone. When I watch those demonstrations, I always cry. It’s moving. Also, so many, many people are with them — peasants, workers, intellectuals… And they truly are the heroes of today,” Abramović said in an interview for the new issue of the weekly “NIN.”
Abramović said that she will come to Belgrade next year to film part of a documentary that covers her life with Ulay in Amsterdam after leaving her hometown, as well as her later period in New York, but she will not present her new work “Balkan Erotic Epic” in Belgrade.
“I will not present it here, first because no one invited me, and also because I won’t out of principle,” said Abramović.
According to her, it is a large undertaking involving 120 people, based on research conducted across the Balkans, and it speaks, among other things, about the meaning of pagan rituals, which she has connected to communism.
“It begins with Tito’s funeral, lasts four hours, I have connected various kinds of performers, it’s imbued with humor, it has a special epic quality… It will have its own life in various places around the world until the end of 2027,” she said, adding that this is the work containing the most autobiographical elements so far.
“I couldn’t have done it earlier because I simply didn’t have the experience, the wisdom. I didn’t have a clear picture of what really happened in my childhood, what was going on with Tito, communism, my country, the pagan heritage, my grandmother’s religiosity, my father, my mother… I couldn’t understand it all, many things caused me pain. At this age I have a clearer picture. This work is very personal, but it also speaks so much about that Yugoslavia which no longer exists,” she said.
Abramović also complained about the attitude of Serbian authorities toward her art, noting as an example that when she had her retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York in 2010, none of the Serbian officials attended, even though she was the first artist from the region to exhibit at MoMA.
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Source: FoNet, Foto: Printscreen Youtube / Brief But Spectacular