(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Late summer 2015 spends performance artist Marina Abramovic and psychoanalyst Jeannette Fischer four days together at Abramovic's Hudson Valley home. The book Psychoanalyst meets Marina Abramović is the result of their conversations. Here Fischer analyzes the relationship between Abramović's biography and art, based on the performances Untitled (Belgrade, 1970), Rhythm 0 (Naples, 1974) incision (Graz, 1978) and The Artist is Present (MoMA, New York, 2010). For each new topic of conversation, we get closer to the root of Abramović's art.
childhood Trauma
Pain as a phenomenon is repeated in all of Abramovic's performances. Pain gives a feeling to the fear, which has its roots in a violent incident in her childhood – performed by her father. Abramovic is six years old when her father teaches her to swim. Pretty soon he loses patience, puts Abramovic in a boat, rows out to sea, throws her into the water and starts to calm her down. She panics, screams for help without luck, and eventually swims away to the boat. The father then takes her back into the boat. This event, as well as her relationship with her parents, characterize her entire artistry.
With a little emotionally present father and mother, Abramovic must make himself emotionally available to them. In the performance Rhythm 0 she risks her own life and allows the audience everything: "I am the object. During this period I take full responsibility. ”
Psychoanalyst meets Marina Abramović makes you understand Abramovic's art on an intimate level – where her childhood dreams are the origin of her performances. A child's relationship with the parents forms the foundation for the child's perception of relationships later in life. Abramovic, for example, always ends up being abandoned by her partners, just as her parents left her. She does not get out of this toxic spiral where history repeats itself. Her performances show how she copes with this unbearable situation, over and over again.
Om The Artist is Present At MoMA in New York, Abramović says: "It's the same energy, and I did it the same way I swam to the boat. I am swimming. I am alone. Everything is in my own hands. I am unloved and rejected – and I survive. ”Through the arts, she works through the emotional violence she experienced in growing up. The art becomes the rescue.
Pain means love
According to Fischer, Abramovic associates love with pain, since she has never experienced a loving relationship with her parents. For her, pain stands for love. And if someone really loves her, she doesn't believe it. Love should hurt – that's why she always ends up alone.
"I am unloved and rejected – and I survive."
Relationships are associated with pain and fear. She must fill the void in her mother's life. She has felt a responsibility to satisfy the needs and desires of others, but no longer does. The consequence is that she is alone – as soon as she does not fill the lives of these people, she is abandoned.
From the book.
Rhythm 0 og Untitled reflects this violence she has experienced. In these performances, she takes responsibility for the actions of the audience, without protecting herself. The audience has no boundaries and can do whatever they want with her – she stages her previously violent relationships.
Happiness is catastrophic
After each performance, Abramovic is overjoyed that she is still alive. She always thinks that happiness is only catastrophic and temporary: “I always thought that if I did something nice or if I felt good I would be punished. I thought that happiness leads to disaster. ”By her parents, she was punished, emotionally and physically, for feeling the happiness of living. To her, only one truth exists: swim or die.
From the book.
A child's first loving relationship in life is to mother. For most mothers, unconditional love for the child comes instinctively, but the case was different with Abramovic's mother; she neglected her and was violent instead. According to Fischer, Abramovic blames herself for the lack of love from her mother – it is her fault that she did not receive love.
It pains me to think that without the pain her parents inflicted on her, the performance artist Marina Abramovics as we know her today would not have existed.Abramovic was last in Norway in 2017, at both Galleri Brandstrup and Henie Onstad Art Center
