NEW YORK, NY.- Marina Abramovic stood and faced the ocean on Fire Island.
For a long minute, her arms rose symmetrically from her sides until her body formed a T shape. Her long red dress was stark against the waves. Her palms faced forward.
Abramovic’s face was not visible, but it was conceivable that she was screaming. The performance artist once screamed for three hours, until she couldn’t anymore (“Freeing the Voice,” 1976); once yelled into her lover’s reciprocating mouth for 15 minutes (“AAA-AAA,” 1978); once persuaded hundreds of people in an Oslo park to shriek in homage to Edvard Munch’s painting “The Scream” (2013).
Perhaps now she was expressing rage at humanity’s spoiling of the planet — the rising seas turned into garbage patches. Years ago, she said, after a deadly tsunami in Southeast Asia, she whipped the ocean 360 times, wanting to punish it.
But no, Abramovic was not screaming at the ocean. At 77, she was trying to give it positive energy and “unconditional love as a way to heal,” she said in her artist’s statement for “Performance for the Oceans.” The new piece — an edition of three photographs to be auctioned in October by Christie’s in London — was made for the conservation charity Blue Marine Foundation.
Abramovic has long explored endurance and extremes, whether by sitting in the Museum of Modern Art for upward of 700 hours or walking across the Great Wall of China. (Or, more recently, leading seven minutes of silence at a rowdy music festival.)
But this year, she took the idea of endurance a step further. With an Austrian herbalist, Nonna Brenner, she introduced a line of products called the Marina Abramovic Longevity Method. They are tinctures made with vitamins and natural ingredients, like garlic and cranberry juice, to boost energy or support the immune system. (The instructions: “Take 50-60 drops two times a day — with food and water.”)
Immediately, some questioned whether the line, which promises “inside-out beauty,” was performance art. It was not. Abramovic, who survived a health emergency last year — and who said she had worked with Brenner to treat her Lyme disease, including with leeches — wants to stay on this planet as long as possible, trash-filled oceans and all. “I’m not going anywhere until I’m 103,” she said.
“In American culture, when you’re old, it’s like you’re dirty, like something’s wrong with you,” said the artist, who was born in Yugoslavia. “In Balkan culture, being old is actually great.”
This was the first thing Abramovic told me on a video call in June, while she was on vacation in Greece. We were supposed to talk about the ocean. We spoke more about the will to live. (They’re connected.)
This conversation has been edited and condensed.
On Longevity
Q: You say Americans are obsessed with staying young and living forever, but you’re also interested in living past 100. What’s the difference?
A: Every wrinkle is a threat in American culture. My idea with aging is to embrace the limits of the body. That you wake up in the morning, that you have pain, that you have arthritis, that you’re not flexible like you were before. Enjoying the limits and seeing how you can accept your body as it is. That’s the difference. Americans don’t accept their bodies as they are.
Q: Personally, I’m a little afraid of living to 100. I don’t know what the planet is going to look like. You’re running toward it.
A: I really want to see aliens, finally, in my lifetime. Some years ago, I asked Richard Branson if he could give me a one-way ticket to go up and not come back. I want to see what is behind all this. I want to see black holes. Who made the cosmos? I have the curiosity of a kid of 5 years old.
By the way, I think here’s how I’m going to look at 120: My nose is very big and my chin is glued together, and I will have one big hair growing out.
Humor about yourself is so important. We have to have a few jokes about this hell we’re living in.
Q: Well, when your Longevity Method was announced, some people weren’t sure if it was serious.
A: I am completely smashed by the press. This is not new for me. If I read and took seriously people’s writing, I would not leave home.
I’ve worked with the body all my life. But first of all, I’m not the doctor. I’m just giving my name to Brenner in order to promote the product. Nobody knows about her. Everybody knows about me.
The products are drops for energy, allergies and the immune system. We are allergic to everything these days because of the way we’re eating food and how pollution is in the air. If you stabilize your immune system, and you don’t have allergies, and you have drops of energy, you’re doing fine. Nothing crazier than that.
Q: You do seem healthy.
A: Every day I’m eating branzino, a grilled fish, with steamed vegetables. Nothing else. I don’t have dinner. I have a light breakfast, and then I eat around 2 o’clock. When you get older, you don’t need to eat so much because you’re not running around like crazy.
Q: What keeps you up at night?
A: The news is always bad — every morning, one horror after another. Why are humans historically constantly at war? Why do we have violence? How is it possible that we never learned lessons? How is it possible we never learned simple things to forgive each other?
I think we need good news. In the Second World War, when everybody was painting the atrocity of the war, Matisse, for four years of the war, was only painting flowers. That’s what we need.
Q: So you’re an optimist?
A: I always see the positive side. And mostly I’m right. Like, every breakup will look terrible in the moment. Actually, years later, you’re so lucky this person is not in your life.
Every day is a miracle. I wake up quite happy every morning. Not always — my life was really difficult. I’m only getting happy lately.
Q: What makes you so happy lately?
A: That I’m alive. I am a little bit worried that I will not have enough time to do whatever I am interested in doing. I’m doing a big thing in Manchester next year. It’s such a crazy project, I’ll just tell you the title: “Balkan Erotic Epic.” In Balkan culture, genitals were used in rituals to connect to the spirits and the gods.
It’s going to be such a scandal. Britain is so puritan. I can’t wait.
Q: Are you going to appear naked?
A: I don’t know yet. When you have the naked body and you present it to the public, it’s not me anymore. If I’m fat, or with cellulite, or with sagging tits, who cares? I’m presenting a concept in that body.
Ask me something that you never asked anybody else before.
Q: Um. Well, since we’ve been talking about longevity, have you ever not wanted to be alive?
A: No. I always want to be alive. I had a very bad heartbreak. It was the saddest thing in my life. But I was just crying. That’s it. And one day I woke up and I didn’t cry anymore.
‘A Good Death’
A few weeks later, Abramovic agreed to continue the conversation at her apartment in Manhattan. She showed me footage from the “7 Deaths of Maria Callas,” an opera she conceived that includes several video clips of Abramovic, with Willem Dafoe as her co-star, dying various painful deaths.
She showed me photos taken last year in a hospital, where she was treated for a life-threatening pulmonary embolism: images of the blood clots removed from her body during surgery and of her first time walking again after being in a coma. (For when she needs it, there is still a cane in her entryway, next to a framed photograph of German dancer Pina Bausch.)
After her discharge, she couldn’t travel by airplane for some time. So she took a boat to Europe, developing a new appreciation for the scale of the ocean. “What’s your Plan B, by the way?” she asked, referring to the day disaster strikes New York and its citizens need to flee. (Her plan is Australia; she has a permanent visa.)
When I arrived at the apartment, a 27-year-old performance artist mentored by Abramovic was just leaving. The artist, Miles Greenberg, asked if he could bring her back any gifts from his summer travels. She requested a “supernatural story.” She is interested in the mysticism — like crystals and numerology — and in 2016 won several bets with friends after her horoscope reader predicted that Donald Trump would win the election. (The horoscope reader said he would lose in 2024.)
After Greenberg left, she explained that she met him when he was 17.
“I don’t have any contact with anyone in my generation,” Abramovic said. “They’re so boring and depressed.”
Q: So you don’t have any friends your age?
A: No. The oldest ones are 55 or 60. But not 77. They’re half-dead, they’re always complaining, they’re always sick.
Q: What do you do for fun?
A: I always try to see life through a child’s eyes. I don’t take drugs, and I don’t drink. I love chocolate. But I don’t need to drink to be funny. I think I’m hilarious. I think I should do stand-up comedy.
Q: Did your perspective on life change with your health scare last year?
A: Yes, oh my God. I have no reason to be depressed. I spent too much time on my broken heart. What a waste.
One of the reasons that I think survived was everything that I learned through performance about pain, about endurance. Last year was the most physical pain I had in my entire life. I could not move, for six weeks, my little finger. The other physical pain I could control. This was something uncontrollable. You can’t control death.
Q: I read that you planned your own funeral many years ago.
A: After Susan Sontag’s funeral, I was so discouraged. I want a big celebration. Nobody wears black, only bright colors. I had a crazy life, and I want to have a good death.
Q: Do you think you’re fixated on death?
A: No! I just wanted to stop being afraid of it.
This article originally appeared in
The New York Times.
