Marina Abramović Interview: Exploring Her Kinship with Jonas Mekas

Marina Abramović reflects on her friendship with Jonas Mekas, recalling how they met in New York in the 1970s and their immediate connection, rooted in their shared bohemian backgrounds and similar artistic sensibilities. Abramović discusses Mekas' work's profound impact on her and his films' enduring relevance.
Marina Abramović is a Serbian performance and conceptual artist who explores body art, endurance art and feminist art, the relationship between performer and audience, the limits of the body, and the possibilities of the mind. Her work created a new kind of participation for observers, which focused on “confronting pain, blood and physical limits of the body. Abramović was born in Belgrade, Serbia in 1946. In 1965, her work Truck Accidents was shown at the Workers’ Union Center and the Youth Cultural Center in Belgrade. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade from 1965 to 1970 and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb from 1970 to 1972. Initially a painter, Abramović subsequently shifted her focus to conceptual work, sound pieces, and Performance art. Abramović moved to Amsterdam in 1975, where she met artist Uwe Laysiepen (known as Ulay), with whom she would live and collaborate until 1988. Her art has been featured in numerous solo exhibitions, including shows organized by the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin (1993), Museum of Modern Art in Oxford (1995), Museum voor Schone Kunsten Gent Gent (1997), the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York (2005), and Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris (2008). A retrospective of Abramović’s work opened in the spring of 2010 at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Abramović lives in New York.
From the 2022 Documentary FRAGMENTS OF PARADISE about Lithuanian filmmaker, Jonas Mekas. From his arrival in New York as a displaced person in 1949 to his death in 2019, he chronicled the trauma and loss of exile while pioneering institutions to support the growth of independent film in the United States. Internationally known as the “godfather” of avant-garde cinema, he inspired countless independent artists.
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Chapter Markers:
00:00 - Opening
00:09 - Marina Abramović Introduction
00:22 - Describing Jonas Mekas
03:21 - Friendship with Jonas
08:45 - Connection between avant-garde film and performance art
12:18 - Jonas and the post-war generation
13:59 - Jonas’ diary films
18:07 - New York in the late 70s
21:01 - Jack Smith
22:44 - Jonas and Marina at ceremonies and symposiums
28:06 - Impact of Eastern European Immigrants on American Culture
29:46 - Jonas’ passing
Marina Abramović, Performance and Conceptual Artist
Interview Date: October 7, 2020
© Kunhardt Film Foundation. All Rights Reserved.
#MarinaAbramović #lifestories

[@cookie5335]

Oh gosh i thought she cut up and ate people
I can see shes all about humor , shes hysterical.
Inspirational?