Fashion Neurosis with Marina Abramović

0:01Support for this show comes from Pure Leaf Iced Tea. When you find yourself in the afternoon slump, you need the right thing to make you bounce back. You need pure leaf iced tea. It's real brewed tea made in a variety of bold flavors with just the right amount of naturally occurring caffeine. You're left feeling refreshed and revitalized so you can be ready to take on what's next. The next time you need to hit the reset button, grab a pure leaf iced tea. Time for a tea break. Time for a pure leaf.

0:32Rinse takes your laundry and hand delivers it to your door. Expertly cleaned and folded. So you could take the time once spent folding and sorting and waiting to finally pursue a whole new version of you. Like tea time you. Mmm. Or this tea time you. Or even this tea time you. So did you hear about Dave? Or even tea time, tea time, tea time you. Mmm. So update on Dave. It's up to you. We'll take the laundry. Rinse. It's time to be great.

1:10Hi, come in.

1:18Welcome to Fashion Neurosis, Marina Abramovich. I'm really happy to be on this couch. I have no idea what to expect. Well, can you tell me what clothes you're wearing today and why you chose them? I look out of the window. British Federal, we're really never sure. So I'm thinking to wear something that I'm sure I could be warm, but if it's too warm, that I can also have layers. Most of the stuff that I'm wearing is gifts. I don't buy clothes since last maybe eight years. People give me clothes. So I wear Versace, Donatella shirt, I wear Yoshimoboto jacket, I wear Ognirka from Serbian designer skirt and I wear what Massimo Dutti boots that's it and of course the the elastic pressure stocking because of my knee operation.

2:35And how about the beautiful black blanket that you've covered yourself with? You know this black collar also come from my childhood I was most of the time with my grandmother and she always wear black. In our country you wear black when somebody die but always somebody die so it's always black. So you have woman in black, man in black and then we have communists. And communists wear something like dirty green, grey, really horrible colors. So I think black was the most practical. But I also like to wear red and I like to wear dark blue and I wear too sometimes summer just white. Yeah, I've seen you in those clothes and they look incredibly beautiful and they enhance your incredible hair and you've got these great red nails today.

3:36It looks very good with all the black. And you're the daughter of two Yugoslavian partisan war heroes who had many privileges because of their status. And you grew up in what you describe as communist drab. And there was money for culture but not for clothes. Do you remember what clothes you longed for? Oh, my child was so miserable. I actually come from something we call probably communist red bourgeoisie. And everybody thinks I was so privileged. but I actually came from military family and everything was forbidden and never was allowed to wear anything kind of girlish or beautiful or clothes that other girls was wearing.

4:24And it was so kind of practical. Worst thing happened to me on every birthday I got this pajama, heavy flannel with some kind of ducks on it because mostly horribly pink and three sizes bigger because my mother think when they wash, they will shrink, but they never did, and I always looked horrible. And then there was this very just, you know, the skirts with lots of panty coats under. It was so, you know, very fashionable. I remember I didn't have one, so I took ten skirts on the top of each other and I put the other one on the top, and it looked so horrible, so you could see all the skirts under.

5:06And I remember girlfriends just laughing at me. I always felt outcast, I always felt ugly, unwanted, and incredibly, you know, the misfit. So clothes was nothing there. I just practically stopped it, that I wear winter, summer, spring. You know, shoes was always orthopedic with this socialist leather. But also my mother wanted them to last for long. So she would put metal plates on the top and the bottom of these shoes. So when I walk, you can hear me like a horse from far away. And then, of course, glasses. I had bad, bad eyes. And the glasses was a tea glass. And I tried to break them in every possible way.

5:57I put them on the window, I close the window, I sit on them or whatever. And I would always, always get a new one. It was no escape. In your memoir, you dedicate it to friends and enemies, and it sounds as though your parents were both of these, and both to you and to each other. Did your mother resent your attachment to your father? Yeah, absolutely. It was so good, this childhood. But my theory, the more shitty childhood you have, the better artists you get, because you have so much material to work out. You know, nobody done anything from happiness, so important. So I had plenty, plenty of bad shit, and also material to work with.

6:48But, you know, I love my father, but I really didn't know how unbelievable he was, you know, unfaithful to my mother. Only when I discover her diary, how she died, and see how much she suffered, if I just read one page of this diary, my relationship with her will be completely, completely different. Yeah. You know, just this fact that she never kissed me. And I asked her one day, I was in my 40s, why never kiss me? She was so surprised. She just said to me, I just want to, you know, not to spoil you. And she really didn't. She made me really, really worried. Yeah. I suppose there must have been something within you that could handle that because that type of lovelessness doesn't always result in strength.

7:42And somehow you've used it as part of your resilience. It's incredibly impressive. And you talked about how your mother beat you all the time and even for sleeping messily. and she dressed you, young, beautiful girl in the ugliest of clothes and she was such a powerful woman. And were you conscious of her envy of you? I don't know. I never really think about that way. But probably there must be truth in this. But I remember that also she provided me with all material to paint. I always have canvases. I always have the tickets to the theater, to the opera. I only listen to classic music. I never even knew who was Beatles or Rolling Stones until I was 30 years old.

8:36I was not able to get out of house until it was 10 in the evening. So all these restrictions sticking backwards, I don't care anymore. I think that really I actually got the unbelievable working discipline from that whole thing and kind of the feeling for order and organization. And in many ways I could never have done all this work if I didn't actually get these qualities from her. But from the father, enormous kind of courage and adventure. He really, she really had the courage. But also my mother had courage, except she never talked about it. So all of these things were revived to me much later.

9:31But I really felt that I live in prison. I also felt that this family was given to me for some kind of mystical reason, that actually I never belonged there. I never felt home, ever. Yeah, you said you adored your father because he never beat you. Instead of horrible clothes, he gave you nylon stockings. But when he was exasperated, when you wouldn't learn to swim, he threw you into the water and you described your rage giving you the wherewithal to swim after him. And I think you were very young then, but I wondered, how did you deal with needing the person who was abandoning you? It was an incredible feeling of being alone in the middle of the sea.

10:19And he didn't even look backwards. And I was drowning. But he would teach me to swim. But I actually could swim. But at that time, fear was taking over. So I was just kind of drowning and screaming for him. And he never turned back. And there is a moment of realization, or I'm going to die, or I'm going to swim. And also incredible realization that, you know, I'm alone and nobody gives a shit. And if I don't take kind of control of my destiny, my shit, and my life, nobody will do. and then came enormous anger. I was so angry. I was really anger actually made me swim and anger made me survive and anger made me not die in that time in the middle of the sea.

11:19And then I just started swimming to the boat and he still was not turning back. He was not turning to me. He only put his head out when he knew I was close. and pull me out like a little dog. And we never talk about this ever. But something has changed in me. I felt, yes, I have to be completely independent. I don't need anybody in my life ever. And that's something to stay with me, all this feeling. Whatever I do, you know, I always kind of know that it's only me. Yeah. who is only me who can make a change or do things. Nobody who ever been around, ever. How old were you when that happened? I was there six years old.

12:15Six. But I felt so bad, so alone. I was in hospital because of the bleeding. And for one year, they think they had a hemophilia, But actually they discovered it was something called hemorrhagia. It was very long, the bleeding, kind of the symptom. I would just bleed all the time for a long time. But I lost my baby tooth and breathed three months. I had to sit down in the bed because not to suffocate. When they put me in the hospital, it was really the most happy time of my life. One year I was around there. and everybody was nice to me, bringing me food. It was just something special. Then I got back home and again, nothing changed.

13:09And this bleeding problem, it's really turned to me just two years ago. Now, I had opposite, the same actually, the genetic problem, but now with coagulation. So I almost died like two years ago. and the two cobras and the aneurysm. And then I survived this. Nobody ever survived from that. They told me that I'm actually a real fighter. And then I have to come to England for my show here. And the only way to come here is to take a boat. I could not fly for five months. So I stayed in England five months. And then finally I went back with the plane. Wow. I fly. I actually came with a queer Elizabeth number two.

13:59Really? It was pure nightmare. It was like a sanatorium on water. Never again. If I have to fly, I will always choose to fly. Yeah. And you talk a lot about shame, and you've said the feeling of shame was like hell in your family. And what did you use as the antidote to shame to keep your drive alive? You need to be so laughter a lot. Well, when I've been reading your book, you refer quite a lot to this feeling of shame. and also I find that that feeling is quite a prevalent feeling in fashion, that there's a sense of shame and how that we're kind of making guises so that that's disguised. Shame, shame.

14:53Shame. I was very shame. I was shame. I was shame. I don't know. I was always feeling I was shame of myself. I felt always overgrowth. I was feeling, you know, they call me giraffe in the school. My nose was too big on the baby face. I just kind of had a strange feeling about my own body. I was so incredibly ashamed of me walking that actually if anybody walked behind me, I stopped immediately and just until the person passed by. I could not imagine that I would talk publicly anywhere, anybody. And the shame stayed so strong. I mean, taking clothes off or any of this stuff was unthinkable. But the moment when I find performance as my actually medium, and the first time I stand in front of the public, this feeling completely disappeared because I was there presenting content, my concept, my ideas.

15:58It was not about my body looking bad or ugly or beautiful or disproportionate. Who cares? It was actually the message that I was giving it. Electricity of that incredible encounter with the public over my own body. I knew that I could never go back to the studio ever. And then also standing in the front of the audience and talking. I mean, now I can talk to thousands of people. Yeah. And it was really absolutely impossible to think of that time. And I remember later on when I met Charles Atlas, and he actually showed me Lee Bowery. The first thing that I had, it was somewhere in the bar in New York.

16:46The first thing that he provoked in me, it was an enormous feeling of shame, that he was doing something incredibly forbidden and shameful. And that was like unbelievable strength. that actually re-radiate. And then I really start thinking about showing the most shameful things in my life to the public and sharing this with the public. And in that way, completely liberate myself from the shame altogether. I used to know Lee Barry as well, and he was so independent of what might be considered things to feel shame about, he reveled in them. And then he made the idea of self-consciousness seem ludicrous almost.

17:31It was so thrilling. It was really a very strong feeling. I, him, with me and him and the Charlie Atlas, we made this insane piece called Delusional, where I worked with 400 rats life. and Lee Bowrie made the queen, rat costumes for me. Yeah. I don't see saying the whole thing. And it was so unbelievably possible that actually because of sanitary problems and rats in the building, the theater had only two performances and they would be closed forever. Really? But that was all unbelievably great because it was something that was breaking every kind of barrier or the norms in society. Yeah. I felt it really with the power and free.

18:30The very funny things about this rat stuff, we actually want to have stage, metal stage on the angle 45 degree and we want to have 400 rats with the metal shoes, magnetic shoes. So they will stay, they will actually kind of be on the stage but they could not run. But then we put disco music so it can dance. And we found one Belgian guy who actually a scientist and give the two rats to make the shoes just to try. After two months, he came back and said, is it possible? It costs fortune because every rat has a different size of his leg. That's so funny. So then we have to work with the rats in a different way.

19:14That's such a good idea to have all these little tap-dancing rats on stage Oh, God. It's brilliant. My God. You're the only person apart from me who I've heard talk about Spartanism, and I was obsessed with self-discipline as a child. Would you say that self-discipline is the same as self-denial? Yeah, they're absolutely warriors. Yeah. You know, when the mothers say to Spartan men, you come back with a shield or on the shield, or otherwise never come back. My God, yeah. I mean, that was a kind of attitude with Spartan culture. I mean, we don't have heroes anymore around us. And heroes is something that you really make possible, impossible, possible.

20:04It's very important for the spirit of everything, of the nation, of human beings, of our planet, heroic action. But to me, it's so important the training of the body and the spirit, you know. And this is why I understood if I want to do what I'm doing, especially long-durational performance art, I have to really train. So like an artist is present, I literally train myself like going to the space program. One entire year, I only eat food during the night and sleep and drink water and never anything during the day so that I reverse completely metabolism in order to be able to be motionless for such a long period of time.

20:49Or I will go to the times with not eating for an extensive period of time, drinking only water, and doing mental physical exercises. Like one of my favorite exercises is opening and closing the door. I mean, you actually open them extremely, extremely slow, slow as possible. Then you open, but you don't exit. And then you again close the door and you don't enter. Just action of that, three hours. When you do this 10 minutes, 15, you amuse. After 15 minutes, you think, I'm completely crazy. Well, I'm doing this shitty stuff. But after you decide, I'm going to do no matter what, and you dedicate yourself to that peer, Then something magically happened.

21:43The door is not the door anymore. The door is opening consciousness. The door is opening the cosmos. The door becomes opening of your mind. And the door actually turns into here and now moment where time does not exist. It's incredible, transformative, simple action. Opening, closing the door. Anybody can do it. God, that's incredibly interesting. Did you invent that exercise for yourself or do you perform that? I mean, I think it's a genius idea and I want to try it. So I'm very interested. When I was reading your book, I found I had so much identification about your rigor and that's what helps.

22:27You know, that seemed an essential thing to be independent of needing anybody when I was a child too. But to me, it's very important to create the first idea, and then you write the instruction. And you never try before, because if you try before, you will never do it. It's too difficult. And trying at home doesn't make any sense. It's important to take the concept and do it in front of the public. Because the public energy is the exact energy you need to actually do something which is like almost supernatural. And that energy is essential. And then you have to absolutely do it no matter what.

23:12If you say to yourself, I have to do it, and it will stop if I lose consciousness or something else happens. But do it to the end. And if you give up, you know, what you decide to do before, then you can't do life either. You give up too easily. And mind is very tricky stuff. Mind will always try to stop you. They always make this construction, you know, that's ridiculous. I don't need to do this. Why am I doing it? But that's so tricky. But decision is so important. No matter what mindset, no matter how shitty or difficult it is, go and do it. And the idea of the end, the realization of that succeeding, something that is very difficult, it's incredibly rewarding because when you do something 100 % is definitely not enough but 150 % is extra energy that may change but also connect you with the public you show them their ability you show the difficulties and then they go with you they give you this extra energy and then really something happens the kind of feeling of connection and being in the presence you seem stimulated by overcoming fear in your memoir you decide you describe the sense of danger that had united the onlookers in the room and when i saw your installation at the south plank in 2022 one scene was so frightening it was almost like being under anesthetic and And what part does fear play in your work?

24:50You know, anything I do before I start, I have enormous fear, anxiety. I have literally crumbles in my stomach. I'm mostly in the bathroom. Even if I have nothing to do in the bathroom, I just sit there. And if I don't have the fear, even public talk, same thing. But if I don't have fear, I will panic that I don't have fear. And that fear is something, it's a kind of, I don't know, indication that I am there 100%. The moment I'm in front of the audience, it disappears, immediately it's gone. And then I'm just there with them. But there with them, I have to be with my mind and my body there. I can't just be there and my mind is, I don't know, I have to be there.

25:40and the public, they feel the fear. They feel insecurity. They feel everything. So you really have to be present for them. And then you connect. And then when this connection happens, you maybe sometimes don't need to do anything. This is the thing. Just stand there with them in the space. You can have so much out of this. People always think that we have to do too much. For me, it's all about having, you know, more and more of less and less. And do you think your near-death experiences in your performances were like a proof of worthiness to live? Because to exist as an artist only is a crushing of the softer, needier self.

26:29And I wondered how you feel about needs. You know, this close to that experience just made me incredibly aware, you know, that how little time we have and how much I have time. I mean, next year I'm 80, and this is really kind of a lot. You know, the one filmmaker was telling me, can you make the documentary about my life for my 80th birthday? And I said, absolutely not. 80 is too early. I can make with 90. and he sent me this really funny email he said nobody ever refused this proposal as 80 is too early and he said I'm 55 how you can think the 80 is too early and 90 would be okay I just said somewhere recently I have no time to die I really don't have time to die I'm so sorry there's so much to be done still and that Just keep me going.

27:29The idea, people say take it easy or just retire and then look at all the people my age. Everybody's so unhappy, complaining, and just not producing stuff. And I think as an artist, if you have a gift, you have no right of any kind to stop. This gift don't belong to you. It belongs to everybody. So just work till you drop that. And that's what I'm going to do. You said that happiness is not a creative state. And a designer friend said to me, if we had perfect bodies, we'd never be designers. Would you say happiness is like a perfect body? But you know, happiness is a state of mind. It's not creative.

28:18Happiness is a state of mind you don't change. But when you really have something that is, I don't know, terrible, disaster, unhappiness, whatever, melancholy, you know not depression depression is disease this is different but all of that things is such an incredible learning material you know to trust that all that and create work that you can you know reflect and give to other people because we all have three basic fears in our life feel of pain feel of suffering and and that mortality so that three things are constantly there with us, you know. So the whole art history, you know, everybody from the books, music, theater, you know, the performers, everybody actually deal with that in different ways.

29:11And which I do, I stage this kind of stuff. And I go through this. And if I go through this, I become your mirror. You know, if I can do this, you can do this. And get fear actually free from the fear of pain, of suffering, and of dying. And that fear is so important to actually confront and take everyday life like you're the last because you never know. That can come out of nowhere. You know, can the asteroid fall on this planet? I don't know. But that feeling that you're always ready and that you enjoy is incredibly important. We lose so much time in bullshit and unhappiness and why like really to be my age right now.

30:00Because I feel better than ever before because I have wisdom, which I didn't have when I was in my 20s, 30s, 40s. I suffer like for such an idiotic shit, mostly, you know, emotional and bad. Oh God, I'm done with this. I feel so much better now because I know what I should avoid and I know how to enjoy simple things. you know, like lying on this couch right now. And look into this invisible camera in the ceiling. And by the way, your ceiling is pretty wide. You don't need to pay this house for at least a few more years. Good.

30:49Fox Creative. This is Advertiser Content brought to you by Nature Sunshine and New Marine Glow Collagen.

31:00If I surf in the morning or if I get in the ocean, my day is always better. It's amazing. This is amazing right now. It's early morning, just past sunrise, and we're out at Rockaway Beach in Queens. The beach is empty except for the surfers, like Tracy. The only surfing beach in New York City, and it's pretty awesome. My name is Tracy Obolski, and I am the owner of Rockaway Beach Bakery. The ocean is very powerful. There's also so much beauty to it. Being in the ocean makes me feel really connected, more confident, motivated, energized. I come out and I'm smiling. You just feel on top of the world.

31:38Nature Sunshine New Marine Glow harnesses the powerful vitality of the ocean by combining the inherent skin-supporting properties of marine collagen with the powerful blue light protection of lutein to help you defy aging naturally. It's the only collagen product clinically proven to support eye and skin health and defend against blue light. Try Nature Sunshine New Marine Glow now at naturesunshine.com. It's so wild. I mean, these people are stoked right now. Look at this. Ah, there you go. Nice little wig. Woo!

32:17I'm really pleased that the Jane Goodall collection with Brilliant Earth connects to my vision of how we can live in harmony with nature. Every choice we make ripples outward, and you can choose what sort of impact you make. I know that the things I've worked for all my life will carry on. Discover the Jane Goodall collection, exclusively at Brilliant Earth. You describe yourself as intensely romantic and you said if you aren't passionate in life, you can't be passionate in art. Do you bring the extremes of your exploration of pain into your sex life? No, I hate pain. Nobody likes pain. I love life.