Marina Abramović, artist: “Now that I can afford bad reviews, I can’t find any” | Culture | EUROtoday

On her journey to the origins of her personal world, to the agricultural Yugoslavia that she knew as a baby, Marina Abramović (Belgrade, 79 years outdated) has allowed herself a tribute to Courbet: within the fourth scene of Balkan Erotic Epic a number of girls present their vaginas to the general public. “My grandmother taught me this ancient ritual and it served to stop torrential rains,” says the artist and pioneer of efficiency from a dressing room on the Liceu, the place this Saturday an immersive present premieres that fuses ancestral myths from the Balkans and folklore traditions linked to the fertility of the physique and the land. “Today people confuse eroticism with pornography,” he explains through videoconference. “This is because we have lost the ability to contemplate nudity in a poetic way.”

Balkan Erotic Epic It is the results of 25 years of analysis. “I have created a new form of art prior to opera itself, where the body and voice precede the performance,” he boasts. Marko Nikodijević’s music combines electronics with ceremonial chants from the Middle Ages, whereas Blenard Azizaj’s choreographies, like a violent conventional knife dance, take the stage expertise to the intense with the assistance of animations by Spanish artist Sonia Alcón. “From the beginning the project was conceived collectively,” particulars Abramović, who leads a bunch of 70 performers. “My idea was that everyone could participate, including the public. It’s not enough for me to have them watch from a distance, I want them to be present.”

As quickly because the curtain rises, Danica, Abramović’s strict mom, seems. “She was a decorated heroine and convinced communist who commanded a World War II squadron and yet throughout her life she knew neither desire nor pleasure.” Who embodies her on stage, the artist and performer Spanish-Serbian Maria Stamenkovic, even takes off all her garments to sing, on a desk, a passage that’s most provocative and express in its invocation of rebel. “In addition to being liberating, this reunion with my mother has turned out to be much more therapeutic than I imagined,” he says. “The question I ask is: what are our bodies really for?” he displays. “For me they are spaces of mystery, power and transformation.”

The stage takes the type of a to your headas the normal tavern is thought on this space of ​​Europe. “The term designates a place of absolute freedom where the big and small moments of life are celebrated,” explains Abramović. “In these lounge-restaurants anything can happen.” There the countertenor Aleksandar Timotić toasts and cries with Josip Broz’s widow Titothe chief of communist Yugoslavia who led the partisan resistance towards the Nazis. “One of the most exciting moments comes with the dance between Albanians and Serbs, historical enemies, which ends up becoming a declaration of love.” The band’s musicians don’t restrict themselves to accompanying the scenes, however “underline each gesture of the story” with their devices.

The play lasts about 4 hours and has no intermissions, however the viewers can go away the room, relaxation within the Liceu bar and return to their seats every time they please. The solely necessities: be over 18 years outdated and hand over your mobile phone on the entrance. “This experience cannot be lived through a screen, it requires full dedication and zero distractions,” warns Abramović. “We tried confiscating the phones in Manchester and it worked very well,” he provides in regards to the premiere of the set up of the identical title that befell final October on the new Factory International headquarters, and which involves Barcelona in a stage adaptation co-produced by the Berliner Festspiele, the Ruhr Triennale and the Park Avenue Armory, amongst different establishments on each side of the Atlantic.

Abramović’s return to the Liceu takes place three years after the premiere of The seven deaths of Maria Callasone other hybrid between opera, video artwork and efficiency by which she herself embodied the ritual sacrifices of Tosca, Desdemona, Carmen and Norma, amongst others, as a tribute to the legendary soprano. “Although in Balkan Erotic Epic “My presence is much more discreet, I cannot conceive a directing job without a certain degree of stage involvement,” he comments. “I need to feel that vertigo, expose myself to others and take risks.” He even signed a contract with Taschen to publish the predictable negative reviews that he ultimately did not receive in Manchester. “Now that I can afford them and I have nothing to prove, I can’t find any,” he laughs.

Next November, the creator of the most radical and transgressive avant-garde of recent decades will turn 80 and will celebrate it with a performance Balkan Erotic Epic in New York. “I have been very worried about death, but now I spend much more time thinking about my legacy,” he admits. “I’ve all the time defended the efficiency as a critical language, with guidelines and tasks, not as one thing that anybody can do or imitate.” This is recognized by the Royal Academy of Arts (whose sensational retrospective can be visited in Vienna these days) and the Venice Biennale, which will host his next individual exhibition. “It is obvious that at a sure age colleges are misplaced,” he confesses. “But not for a second would I modify what I’m now for what I used to be once I was 18.”