S6 EP7: Marina Abramovic on the relationship between performance and pain, never feeling loved in her childhood, and harmful conspiracies

27:25I made the work and this work is for you to judge, write about, discuss, reproduce in many different places. But I'm gone. I've done it. I can't go back constantly to think about past. But I want to say good work of our many lives and I'm proving that with this kind of work. I mean, Rhythm Zero came out in the press all the time, but it was a period nobody talked about. And now we are 21st century and it's on still. And you ask him, so it's still on. Well, and I think you sort of answer this because it's a sense of which it's part of a lineage. Someone else doing it would have less meaning. You know, the fact that it came out of a tradition, out of experiences you'd been through.

28:10I have to say also that I come from Balkan. I come from ex-Yugoslavia from really Tito time where what I was doing, I was the black sheep. I was like, this was kind of unthinkable. My parents would have been really questioning party meetings. What is happening? You know, it's very much to do with my background, how I get that I'm here now, you know. There's a quote which I found interesting. You said, only ideas that really disturb me and I'm afraid of, something that is like so demanding and stay for a long time obsessional in my system, that's the idea I'm going to do. I'm absolutely right, quote, yes.

28:51Absolutely, yes. Everything which is nice and beautiful and I like, I have no point to doing it. You repeat yourself. You're the same over and over again. There's no charge. If you wanted to really get experience and go to another level, you have to do things for difficult unknown. And you also have to learn to fail because not every time that you're a success. If you go to something you don't know, you don't know what's the end, you fail, you stand up and you go on. Can we unpack that a tiny bit, that idea of something that's disturbing and why that is a helpful compass for your artistic work?

29:28disturbing morally or disturbing in in terms of disturbing to me in what way different things you know which is incredibly interesting kind of thing that people don't really do deal so much how to stage things that you're shame of shame is to me also disturbing thing shame to be shame to be shame you know i i the first thing shame to be naked the front of the public to start with. And exactly what I did. Shame to, you know, how you look or nose is too big. You know, whatever you're thinking about, just shame of the secrets that I want to share. I don't have secrets. I tell everything. When I made The Life and Death of Marina Abramovich and Bob Wilson, also in Manchester some years ago, you know, Bob Wilson said to me...

30:14Robert Wilson, the famous avant-garde American theatre director. Was it a theatrical piece? It was a theatrical piece. It was a really theatrical piece. Is that with Willem Dafoe? Yes. Which is interesting, this piece. I wanted to actually make my funeral on the stage. And I always want to have three marinas who live in three different places in the world, which is Amsterdam, Belgrade, and New York. It's your dream funeral, is that what you're saying? Yes. You want three marinas, and then there'll be three funerals, and then people won't know which casket your body's actually in. But there are three celebrations at the same time.

30:50Why three? I like three. First, I like three because there's three marinas in me anyway. It's one heroic one, one spiritual one, and one bullshit one. All three live such a nice life. But can I just finish what I'm saying? Yeah, please. Okay. God, difficult with you. Yes. So what I want to say. So Bob Wilson, I give him this, all my work, and I give him all my diaries, you know, to make material. Because I want it to be actually what I want. I want to give him everything from me, and I want him to direct me. I want that my biography look fresh and different to me. Otherwise, he always chose the same things to show to the public.

31:32So he took everything. He called me to talk, and he said, I'm absolutely not interested in your art. Everybody knows. Which I'm interested in your bullshit, sad, terrible childhood stories. And these childhood stories, we're going to make them slapsticks, because only when you make something tragic, funny, really hits you harder. Otherwise, it looks kitschy. So they're so incredibly sad for me that I'm crying through the entire rehearsal, literally crying. He said to me one day, can you stop this stupid crying? The public have to cry, not you. Then we rehearse. Then we play this piece. Then I completely liberated myself from this, completely of this, all the trauma stories.

32:12Then we played this theater. In New York, we came the very important psychoanalyst to my green room and she said to me Marina which I just see on the stage you save yourself 25 years of very very expensive therapy and this is what I do I as William Dafoe it was a very important part of the show he said to in one interview why this biography works because this biography is actually so personal They become a biography of all of us because it's transcendental. You take something deep and you turn it and become a story of everybody, all human people, humanity. Well, you've talked about your upbringing being difficult, the parents being violent, maybe with each other, was it?

33:01Yeah, it's all true in the biography, but it's great. They were partisans, they were war heroes and loyal communists. They separated. Your mum you've described as extremely undemonstrative in her physical, in her affection, didn't kiss you. I mean, never touched me. Never touched you. My grandmother was wonderful and she was, she hated communism. My grandmother was more religious. She was orthodox Christian. Do you think you felt a lot of shame growing up? I just, that idea you mentioned earlier, owning shame. But you know, my mind also went to shame in the culture and Donald Trump. How you get Trump together with communism and my mother?

33:41is amazing. It's really genius. Genius jump. Shame, because that shame is double-edged. Shame is imprisoning. But you see someone in Trump, someone who has no shame, and that's the source of enormous power. In a shame-based culture, if you have no shame, you're like omnipotent. No one can embarrass or disgrace you because you say, yeah, I did it, and no one cares. Right? But also, I show shameful things. I show, you know, this thing that I'm shame of, and I share with you. But I mean, whatever's through my work. But you still feel shame about things? Less and less, probably. You know, but who knows?

34:19You know, I'm really ashamed that I feel terribly afraid when there's turbulence in the plane. Immediately, I take the right New Testament. If there's turbulence, I can relate to that. That's not shame, that's just fear. But wait, how you put Trump into the shame? Shame, because I'm thinking like, you were saying like, we need to rid ourselves of shame. And I was thinking, actually, no, I think we need shame. And some people need more shame. But can I honestly, wait, wait, it's so interesting. I'm pro-shame. Let's go back to Trump. Shame on you. No, no, let's go back to Trump. Yes. Have you met Trump?

34:51Never. Would you like to meet him? No. Why not? I don't care. So Trump is actually an amazing psychologist because he understands the stupidity of the huge population of America. America is not New York. Apologies to all our American fans. Wait, America is not Los Angeles and not America is not Chicago. You're making it worse now. You've actually made it more snobbish. I think we have to say the mass of the public is uneducated globally. And America, because it's a superpower, they don't really think a lot about the rest of the world. They're surprisingly ignorant about geography. Let's put him out.

35:29But honestly, which I want to say, he really, I think he's playing this all shameful story. This is an act. I don't think he's capable of a different act, though, do you? I don't know. Actually, not really busy with him. I don't think she's ever actually worshipped anything, said James. I cannot tell you something that I really, really love about BBC. At the time when he was visiting the palace, the BBC made the two programs of Trump, including 42 lies and another problem. Congratulations. This was really nice. Yes. Nice balance. I didn't know that. You never saw that? You don't look television look like.

36:08I never watch television. I knew it. No. I make television. I watch a lot of television. You make one. I do make programs sometimes. It's like sausages. If you know how they're made, you don't eat them. That's a joke. I watch a lot of television. Okay, this is James Westcott, your biographer, said, what she has done, this is about you, is graze world religions and esoteric spiritual practices as source material for experimental performances and meditation tools to solve her bottomless emotional pain. I didn't write this. This is opinion. I made my own biography.

36:49Are you in a lot of pain? Do you think there was a lot of pain there to do with your upbringing? I'm not trying to sound like super like psychological, but there was a lot of pain and a lot of shame where you made to feel ashamed. Can I tell you, it's so good all this to experience. You see where I am now. I'm really happy. Well, we didn't talk about the pain. What happened? Because you have to have all this. What was the stuff? Because you mentioned it with the Robert Wilson as well, the stuff that was making you cry. We don't have to go deep into this. I'm just curious. I was beaten as a child.

37:17Many children in the entire world have been beaten. I was a difficult child too. I mean, you have to admit, I was a rebel constantly. And, you know, I was slapped all around many times. By your mother? My mother mostly, never father. And grandmother would sometimes take her pantoufles and kind of, you know, try to catch me. But I was faster. Pantoufles? You know, from the slipper, from her feet. But the thing is about how we use this word abuse for everything. Yeah. I think, did you ever been bitten, the slap in the face for something done wrong in your life? Yes. So, are you feel abused? No. No, me either.

37:57What about emotional pain? Sometimes the worst abuse isn't physical. Okay, okay, okay. Now we're talking much more interesting stuff. Physical pain is so easy to take. Emotional pain is hell. This is what my entire work, after really pushing my physical limits of my body, I got into this whole mental area. You're talking about emotional pain you experienced in your art. Love breaks, art. But what about growing up? We don't have to talk about your childhood, but I feel like there was something there. Emotional pain was terrible. I never felt loved, ever. I always felt so lonely, abandoned. When I asked my mother when I was 40 years old why she never kissed me, she was so shocked.

38:39She said, of course not to spoil you. But I find diary of my mother when she died. She had Alzheimer's. She'd never been touched. She only touched me when she didn't even know it was me with Alzheimer's. When she died, I found a diary of her, and I looked at these diaries. This diary is the most heartbreaking. She was so lonely. My father left her when she was 42 with a 25-year-old woman, and she'd never been with anybody else, and she just was trying to make me a warrior. She didn't want me to go to any emotional pain, and I didn't know that. If I read one page of this diary, my relation to my mother would be very different.

39:15but I didn't know. She didn't want you to go through emotional pain therefore she deprived you of emotional support and comfort. Completely. She pretty damaged me because it was difficult but it's fine. I mean, you know, all of these experiences I put in my work, I liberated myself from a lot of these things and now I would like to tell you that it took me so many years to actually go away from Yugoslavia, go away from my childhood, to come back here in Manchester and to make Balkan Erotic Epic, to come back exactly where I started, to my childhood and make peace with this. It's a very important project for me.

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41:27In the resumes of your work and in the coverage, in the interviews, and certainly in that documentary, Ulai comes up a lot, the 12 years when you collaborated together, a lot of tempestuous breakups and then that's incorporated into the work one of the pieces involved you slapping each other for 20 minutes? Yeah, but this was not about slapping, it was about music it was using body as a music instrument my dear, why do people see slapping? I mean, you just make sound Yeah, but you didn't slap each other you could have slapped each other on the hands you could have just gone like that It was a wonderful piece actually, slapping each other we create a rhythm, create a speed when we could not speed anymore, we stopped We were walking half blue each on the street, very much in love.

42:07It was all good. Yes, but it must have been painful. Surely that's part of the point is that it's painful. Can I explain to you about pain in performance now? I know what you're going to say. Shall I tell you what you're going to say? You're going to say, when you're doing a performance, you don't feel the pain. Then why are we doing this interview with no even my answers?

42:26Well, because I think it's a bit disingenuous because I think... I like talking to you. Not easy one. No, no, because you're saying, oh, it's just making music, but obviously you're slapping each other. Yes, but it doesn't have the idea that that's, well, that's not ridiculous. The concept is important. Concept is everything. Really, it's important. Okay, look at this simple street that I sometimes take for my students example. All right. So you are jogging and you're jogging in the street, in the park, and you jog to the last minute of your breath. Now, all what you want to have, go home, have a shower and a beautiful breakfast.

43:01In this moment, come the man with the gun and say, I will kill you if you don't run. What you do, you run like hell. From which energy you run when you just exhaust your energy? You run from the extra energy, this is survival energy in your body who is always there for you that you can survive. But in performance, in all your rational works, and you're talking about pain and all this, you train yourself to use this excessive energy that you normally don't have in real life, and you're not threatened to that, but you can use it. That's an incredibly important thing. And also, you can't do performance without public.

43:37I could never do anything in my studio because first, I don't like it because it's painful. Second, it's too long. The third, I don't have any reason to do it. But if I share my experience with the public, they can understand constantly why I'm doing what I'm doing to liberate themselves from the fear of pain. Then in that case, energy of the public, give me this extra energy that actually, that the same runner get with the gun in your face. That's really important. The energy of the public is everything. I'm not digging in, but I think what I'm trying to acknowledge is that part of what makes a performance like the slapping one, what was it called?

44:14I shouldn't call it the slapping one. It's called light dark. Light dark. Part of what is intrinsic to that is a sense of you're either transcending the pain or not feeling the pain and that the audience is assuming there's pain there. It's a bit naive to suppose, oh, the pain is... Okay, Vito Conchi in early 70s made... He was a writer and also a performance artist and he made the title Body Art. He did the masturbation one, I think. Oh, wonderful piece. Okay, he... He was underneath the floor of a gallery. I re-performed this piece, of course I know. Was he wanking for like a couple of days or something?

44:52I re-performed this piece in Guggenheim, my dear. You did? Seven easy pieces. But wait, go back down. How long were you masturbating? No, no, no, we can't jump like this. We've already gone. We have to go back to the body is a place where things happen, body art. Okay, so now the slapping, this is why we took slapping to be the music, screaming to be the sound, bumping the walls, you know, with the whole entire body is about architecture and the sound. Which was one where you ran into the wall. And the sound of the body. And it sort of bounced off. Everything was based on sound and not about pain at all.

45:29But you always see pain, but trust in yourself from the pain and see it larger, have a larger picture. No, I think I get that. What was that piece called, the masturbating one? What was it called? Seedbed. Seedbed. I don't get that. I read about that. I'm like, you can't wait for that long. Is it Vito Acconci? Vito Acconci, Seedbed. Seedbed. Interesting. Gosh, there's a lot to get into. So you want me to tell you what I've done with Seedbed? Yes, that's right. I knew it. Okay. Thank you. You kept me on track. Yeah, that's what it was. So he elevates the floor of the gallery and he masturbates under the gallery.

46:11And he was microphoned, I think. And he had a microphone and talking about, you know, his experience. And he was looking up the dresses of the people walking around? The people just walking, that's it. Was he naked? He was under the floor, not visible. Not visible. Okay, Guggenheim. That makes it easier. I made seven, called seven easy pieces, where I re-performed pieces, including also my own, to understand that actually you can re-perform work. And I re-performed also under the floor, exactly as he did, the seat bed. And I also, I re-performed the seven hours, because each day was another performance.

46:48And the question is, he produced perm. what I produce when I masturbate. Humidity. Humidity. You know, it was very difficult for me because in this performance, I went in seven hours with five orgasms and the next day I have to perform. My energy was really low. I wonder how many times he... Let's not go down. That's vulgar. Let's not talk about that. If I'm the most difficult artist talking to or you have worse ones than me? No, perfect. You're a dream subject. No, because this is all really interesting, and I appreciate you're willing to indulge. I recognize I'm being maybe a little bit of a philistine in some of my questions, but I think that's perhaps important.

47:33You're old-fashioned, my dear. Okay, I can live with that. When you were with, were you going to say something? No, just old-fashioned, but I really want you to get a little more, you know, edgy. Edgy, okay So when you're with Ulai, he was German He'd been born in Nazi Germany You were born in communist Yugoslavia You had this, it's actually quite beautiful reading about it You had this romance You were vagabonds, artistic outlaws Travelling around for years Kind of willfully homeless That was I think part of your commitment To the artistic process In kind of a small van This would have been in the 70s then early 80s then you were planning this work where you were going to walk the length of each week was going to walk half the length of the great wall of china and meet in the middle and get married but it took seven years to get the permits and by then you were eight and then by then you were on the rocks so instead you um decided to meet and split up right we still did the artwork but had a different outcome but meanwhile he'd been cheating around he'd been cheating on you right he'd been womanizing the last three years when we stopped leaving the car In the car, nobody could cheat.

48:43We live in the car. When you decided to split up from him, you almost sound like, not exactly an artwork because it was real life, but you took an approach in order to almost fall out of love with him. Do you know where I'm going with this? You basically agreed to have a three-way with him. This is in your book. No, this was before splitting. Yeah, before. But what I took it to mean was, so you agreed you didn't really want to. He had a girlfriend, rock and roll, a rock and roll chick. He went to China to get permissions to walk the great old China. And when I came to China to visit to see where permissions are going, he was already with this woman and they were sleeping every night.

49:25And I said, can I come and be together? And this was the worst decision of my life. And I described very well in the book. But it sounded like it was a process, whether it was deliberate or not, it allowed you to disconnect. The feelings were cauterised. It was really important that something happen that I stop loving like his smell. That was the end. You stop loving people's smell. Nothing you can do about it. That was the end. In watching the documentary, I have the impression, re-watching it this morning, Ula wanted to get back together with you. Yeah, but Ola was interested to get back with work, but I could not do this anymore.

50:10Did he want to work with you again? Yes, this was what he was interested in. That was his agenda? No, he was asking me if he could do a few pieces together, and I said no. Oh, you don't think it was a romantic rapprochement? No, no. The romantic was that, because first of all, trust was gone.

50:30you're one of the most famous artists in the world right I don't feel that way because it's how the people project me so I'm kind of you know really over all this because if my success came when I was young like young artists you know that happen with the musicians with writers they can burn so much they really start thinking how great they are and they start drinking and die of overdose but I see the success such a low process only came after my my 60 so 2010 was a catalyzing moment wasn't it it felt like something changed you know first show in New York plus the documentary you know that I go to Golden Lion in when I was 50 and that was with the what's it called Balkan Baroque in the time of the war cows bones uh in the basement of a building in in Venice Yes.

51:17And that was really big comment on the war. And it's so interesting that work was really done from my, again, shame of the Balkan War, which is very shame of. That piece now is relevant. You have shame over that? Of the Balkan War, yes. Why? Because I think it was terrible what happened to ex-Yugoslavia. But that's not your responsibility, is it? It is not, but at the same time, this is why I don't say that I'm Serbian or Montenegro or anything. I say I'm ex-Yugoslav because my country don't exist. So when I made this washing the bones with the blood. Washing the bones, the cow's bones in 97. 2050.

51:54Amazing piece. There's a video on it you can see on YouTube. It looks powerful. You were there for five days. You know, beautiful white smock or dress scrubbing the bones. Dirty, meaty, smelly cow's bones. And with the worms coming out. With worms coming out. And the blood and the rest is not white anymore. But the thing is that that piece was really, I want to create, again, image which is transcendental for any war, any time. So that war, long time ago, but other wars are coming. This is always relevant. And this is important for artists to create pieces that are relevant and to have many lives again.

52:30And you won the Golden Lion and huge success from that and then consolidated and elevated in 2010 with the enormous success of The Artist is present. You're half artist, half rock star, half religious guru. I mean, you've got this extraordinary level of visibility. Your profile is off the charts, on the cover of lots of magazines. Nevertheless, I don't think you've maybe exploited it financially as much as perhaps you could have done. You feel free to disagree? Pretty naughty, because I never make art to create something like art commodity. I was going to say because Damien Hirst, who's probably the most famous British artist.

53:08But he's genius. He's worth maybe 300, I think it's 350 million dollars. I find, honestly, Damien Hirst is the artist who, amazing, you know, have a capacity to really fight art market in his own benefit. He's understood the business side of it. Unbelievable. For me, chapeau for Damien Hirst. Pats off to Damien Hirst. I don't have this ability at all. I have the other ability. How do you, like, how do you, for those who don't understand the art world, and, you know, an enormous amount of it is the infrastructure and the administration and organizing, right? And how do you get the people involved to get the, you know, the people in the space to perform the exhibition and get the...

53:50Okay, just to tell you... How do you make a living? Okay, just to tell you a little bit in background. Olafur Eliasson have 265 assistants working for him. Christopher Eliasson is an artist. A very famous artist, live in Berlin. Jeff Koons, 165 maybe. Jeff Koons, is he still alive? Of course, very much alive. He's no good. Then Damien Hirst. Do you not like Koons? I don't have any opinion. Come on. Put it out there. Come on. I will never say anything against anybody. Do you like Banksy? Huh? Banksy? I know all of them, of course. Do you like Banksy? No, I'm not opinion. I'm not telling anything.

54:27I don't like to say anything about... That's a good, I think that's a good approach. If you've got nothing good to say, say nothing at all. Sorry? My grandfather used to say that. If you've got nothing good to say, then don't say anything. They're all, you know, working, living artists. And good for them. But wait, you constantly go off the track. God, how I can keep you on the track? I think Damien Hirst went close to 300. I don't know how many. Assistants. Assistants. He couldn't have 300 full-time assistants. Okay, never mind. But it's big numbers. Can you imagine? I had one assistant, just one.

55:04Right now I work with three people, and I'm going to continue, and I think this is right number, three, and that's it. You've got three people. But I have institutes where more people, they're working, they're independent, and I have the huge ability to organize stuff to make my work, but not the same ability to make money of my work. I don't have this ability like they do. But can I tell you how most of the time I learn my money? I teach 25 years and I have a salary. I teach in Germany. I teach in Hamburg, in Berlin, Braunschweig. I teach in Japan, in Kitakushu. I teach in three years in Paris.

55:45Now I don't teach. I made the workshops. I made the big talks with 5 ,000, 6 ,000 people. I think you've worked with BBC Maestro. Let's get that plug in there. You've done some courses for BBC Maestro. which people can see online? This maestro is fantastic, what we've done just now. BBC Maestro, which I've done, they came to my home to explain to them Bramovich Method. 28 exercises that you can actually get anytime you want to go to my Bramovich Method. You click Maestro and you get one. The Abramovich Method. You get one of the exercises. Method of what? Of life, of art? Just how to be present.

56:17How to be present. And you keep any of these exercises good for you. Maybe a few of the concentration to stay in one subject will be good exercise. Any religion? That you can actually top. I heard that. That dig was noted. I'm just saying. Any particular, you could be any religion and do that. It doesn't conflict with other spiritual practices. To nothing. Like Scientology. Do you know about Scientology? I saw your program on it. No, you didn't. Yeah, I did. Can we escape that part? That was unexpected. God. Can we talk about the Pizzagate thing? The what? The Pizzagate thing. I mean that must have been stressful It sounded like a night It's stressful because I have the really life warning Death threats do you mean?

57:03That they will come and take the devil out to my body From who? Unknown We should explain for people listening what happened You know it would be so wonderful Anybody can Google Marina Bramwich New York Times, the Pizzagate I have a huge report of this with title, I am not satanist, I am an artist. But if you want a story, it would take a few minutes. It was basically, you were friendly with, who is it, John Podesta? Tony Podesta is a collector, which I work with. John Podesta is his brother. Who worked with the Clintons? We worked with the Clintons for a long time. And he was in town, Tony, and I invite him for dinner.

57:47I used to make these funny dinners called spirit cooking, which I make normal food with the funny recipes. You know, they're just kind of poetry. Let's tell you one recipe. Take 13 leaves of green cabbage, mix with 13 ,000 grams of pure jealousy, put in iron pot. Pure jealousy. Jealousy. Put in iron pot and eat just before attack. Just before attack. Attack. Jealousy attack. Then next will be like spill fresh morning urine put over the nightmare dreams. Like, you know, just pee over the nightmare dreams. I mean, there's a kind of vision and the images. Or you have to... Surrealistic poems. Yes, all.

58:33Anyway, so he sent to me a little message and he said, you never met my brother. he's in town, send me this email and send me the John Podesta email. I send email to John, if you want to come, his brother is coming, blah, blah. He sent email to his brother that's not going to come, not to me. Never had meeting with John Podesta, never saw him, and never came for the dinner. Now, it's this old thing with the investigation of emails, the WikiLeaks. And in these emails, the most strange thing was that I invite him, Tony Podesta to come to spirit cooking dinner in my place. So they Googled me. See the cat star, kumini star in my stomach.

59:17Basically, they would have leapt on these apparently... They see as a pentagram immediately. Pentagram, seemingly satanic symbols and whatnot. So from one day... That would have been catnip. One day from another, I opened my email and it's bombarding that I'm the witch, that I'm eating children, that I'm drinking the blood with Hillary Clinton in Pizzagate. I'm completely shocked. They put it together with the pre-existing narrative, which was based on a kind of bonkers conspiracy theory to do with trafficking of children and satanic ritual abuse. So there was this framework for it, and you slotted into it perfectly.

59:55Completely. And then it came horrible. I had to change my emails, I had to change my credit cards, because they were attacking me. they're going to come and, you know, they cut my throat, they're going to take devils out of me. Crazy QAnon type. Do you know about QAnon? Yes, the same guy who said 36 kids killed, you know, in this horrible school that actually was actors. Oh, Alex Jones? Alex Jones. Was he a ringleader for the allegations against you? That is Alex Jones. Really? Did he get in touch with you or he was talking about you? No, talking about me, not in touch. Then he actually promoted me from the priestess into highest priestess.

1:00:33Now I'm higher priestess. According to Alex Jones. Yeah. So I got so fed up with this shit. I can't take this away from me. I made a big article in New York Times saying, I'm not satanist, I'm an artist. And, you know, nothing I can do. And it's still there. And, you know, this problem is that I have started having bodyguards because, you know, I had the opera, Seven Deaths for Maria Callas in Carre Theatre in Amsterdam and I lived there for 30 years. I had to be godly guard every single day to go to theatre and back because there was an announcement, the alarm, that there will be people in the weapons in the theatre when I'm there.

1:01:11Because of the Alex Jones stuff? All of this, yeah. Then when I was leaving the last day of performance, there was enormous, beautiful, made from fresh roses, the heart in the front of theatre. And I was thinking this was for me, finishing the work. And they said, no, no, this is a protest for the children. You just eat. Honestly, it's not fun at all. And I am just horrified by this. But the same guy, I mean, now, you know, he is sued by the family for 135 million, you know, to pay. And now he asks his supporters to pay back his debts. The family of the Sandy Hook, the bereaved Sandy Hook families where the children got killed.

1:01:55I think now he said, okay, maybe I got it wrong. You follow what's happened to him. There's a documentary. It's a pretty good documentary. It's called The Truth vs. Alex Jones that follows the trial. I never saw it. I think you'd find it interesting. And then he goes up to the family and you can sort of see, I think he's a pretty cynical guy in the sense that I think he knew that his audience loved the idea of satanic ritual abuse taking place. and so he began giving that currency and then you see him going up to the family members afterwards saying I'm sorry if I got a couple of things wrong.

1:02:29I have two FBI agents come to my house to see if I'm okay because they found the list somewhere in Arizona with my name on the list as a target. That's not fun. So I don't like this at all and really nothing I can do about it. It's a side effect of the internet. It's become a dumping ground for toxic conspiracy theories. And I wish I could say, oh, you know, oh, put it out of your mind or move on. But you're right, it festers. It really, really affects me. And also one other thing that's really terrible is actually America is so full of this kind of people who can really go and blow your head for no reason.

1:03:15There is a group of people who absolutely believe that Earth is flat, you know. Do you still live in America? I do. So you have to be careful. I am. I'm trying my best, really. Thank you so much. Are you okay? I'm perfect, how are you? You're perfect. For you this is nothing. This is like a breeze. Right? If you could sit for eight hours like, what was this? I am hardcore, my dear. I like that.

1:03:57Welcome back. It's me again. Did you enjoy that? Yes, you did. because it was fascinating. And the world of art has been opened up to you. I sometimes joke that you, the viewers, the listeners, are morons. And maybe you are. But it's my job to try and educate you a little bit and entertain. And I think we did that today. Am I being too ironic? Seriously, though, the world of performance art is confusing, and at the same time, intoxicating. Who doesn't want to hear about people doing extraordinary things? I thought I did a good job. I'm patting myself on the back, of kind of calling Marina out on the fact that quite evidently slapping someone else around the face is not just about making an interesting noise, it's also about, wow, that's super painful, humiliating and kind of embarrassing, right?

1:04:47Let's call a spade a spade. The show itself, Bolton, Michael Bolton, erotic epic as I like to call it, Michael Bolton wasn't there. I was disappointed. Nevertheless, there were some things to enjoy. Right?

1:05:09Oh, dear. I peaked. I peaked too early. How do I describe it? So the first thing is you go in and you surrender your phone. It's put in a little locked plastic case, which feels oddly, what's that, emasculating? Deweaponising? You sort of feel stripped of your, it feels unsafe. I'm not safe. I don't have a phone. But then you go in and you realise why. I mean, look, how long have you got, people? You parade up a staircase following a kind of Balkan procession of musicians playing this, how do I describe the musical style? If you know the band Beirut, it's a brass-led, rather melancholic and lugubrious, but nevertheless tuneful musical style.

1:05:59That's not right. It doesn't sound like that. And then you arrive in this large, huge, hangar-like, I mean, it's a soundstage, but it's absolutely, what, I mean, 100 metres high maybe, maybe not that much. And then there's performers, and there was eight, ten different, I think she had a word for it, well, sets, let's call them. Stations, I think she called them. And in each one, something else, something different is happening. There was one where it was like a grassy verge and there were like five or six naked men just kind of humping the ground, thrusting into the ground. There was another one where women in a graveyard were quote unquote making love to skeletons.

1:06:44I mean, it was an extraordinary tableau of bizarre, surreal, enticing, sometimes musical stagings. Look, there's more I could say about that. It was kind of fascinating. Quite salt-burny, the man pumping ground. Quite salt-burny, Millie says, taking it low road as usual, being super basic, where we have to translate it into viral movies of last year to make it intelligible to the moronic public. It kind of is salt-burny. It also reminded me of Philip Roth. There's a scene in Sabbath's theatre where he has an affair with a woman who, I think, oddly enough, is Yugoslavian and then finds himself, after she dies, masturbating over her grave and then finds someone else there masturbating.

1:07:35I mean, it's a weird book. We're getting off-piste. Artist assistance, Millie's written, probably should clear up as some of the numbers were a little inflated. Fair enough. Olafur Eliasson has 90 to 100 90 to 100 assistants not 265 is that what she said? that's still a lot though Jeff Koons used to have around 120 assistants but has since let some go and has around 30 now Marina was partially correct I think I also said Jeff Koons is a load of rubbish I said something rude apologies to Jeff Koons I've since found out he's a big fan I haven't found that out but if he is and even if he isn't, I actually do quite like Jeff Koons' artworks.

1:08:20You know, he does those big metal recreations of balloon animals, but in steel. They're really quite cool. So I don't know why. I think I bashed him because he's big and I was punching up. Damien Hirst has a little over 100 assistants, but has since laid some off. Our thoughts and prayers are with Damien. And the assistants have been laid off. Maybe them both. Sometimes it's tough being the big guy. The overdog has feelings too. Speaking as one. Thank you so much for joining me this series, it says. Millie's written, There will be plenty more episodes. I sincerely wish you all the best. This is me doing a bit now.

1:09:12On their way to you in the new year. This is my new speaking style. And in the meantime, keep your eyes peeled for some bonus excitement in the festive period. That's it for this week. All that's left to do are the credits. The producer was Millie Chu. The assistant producer was Man Al-Yaziri. The production manager was Francesca Bassett. The music in this series was by Miguel de Oliveira. The executive producer was Aaron Fellows. Millie stopped doing the thing. That's fine, I can remember. This is a Mindhouse production for Spotify.

1:09:49This episode is brought to you by Shopify. When I was younger, I always wanted to be either an astronaut or an athlete. I was a fast runner. I thought maybe I could make it to the Olympics or be blasted off into space. As it happens, neither of those dreams came true. I had to settle for being an award-winning documentary maker and international celebrity. Ah well, we've all had big dreams and it's never too late to make them happen. This is your sign to stop holding back and go for it, especially if your dream is to run a business. Because Shopify is making it easier than ever. It's there to support you every step of the way, from designing your website, to marketing, to product descriptions, to sales.

1:10:31The list goes on and on. So give it a shot. Turn those dreams into... Sign up for your$1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com slash louis. L-O-U-I-S. That's shopify.com slash louis. L-O-U-I-S.