“I Want to Live to 110”: Marina Abramović, in Conversation With Juergen Teller

Stick around a Marina Abramović show long enough and you’ll turn from spectator to participant to method actor. The method, of course, is Abramović’s own, and your willingness to buy into it determines the success of the entire performance. For five decades, the Yugoslavian artist has conditioned her audiences to be present while she sits at a table for hours on end or counts grains of rice by hand, forcing a kind of raised consciousness through the shared experience of that space and time. It’s a method of performance art characterized by banality and repetition (but not satanism, as some of her critics have proposed).

In her most recent exhibition, Transforming Energy, on view at the Modern Art Museum Shanghai until March 28th, the public is asked to partake in a spiritual transformation through glowing crystal portals, flowerbud baths, horse-hair whippings, and hour-long periods of stillness, requiring a discipline Abramović says Western audiences lack. To unpack the divinity of it all, she called up another artist similarly interested in pushing formal boundaries. “I cannot show any photographs, any nudity, any performance work,” she tells Juergen Teller of the show. “So it’s a really radical show about transforming energy with objects.” Four weeks after a titanium knee replacement, Abramović spoke to the fashion photographer about her first-ever exhibition in China, walking the entire length of the Great Wall, and her dream project: a chair made from meteorites. “I need somebody to sponsor,” the 78-year-old quipped. “If anybody hears this from Silicon Valley, they can buy it for me for my birthday.”

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JUERGEN TELLER: Hello.

MARINA ABRAMOVIĆ: It’s the pink that you have this emotional connection to. If you have a pink blouse, you have pink socks. You now have a pink hat. I could right away identify you. You’re so recognizable. 

TELLER: [Laughs] Yes.

ABRAMOVIĆ: But first, listen, I’m in a wheelchair and with a stick, so it’s so complicated to move around. I have a brand new titanium knee and it’s only been four weeks. I’m so happy I did it, you’ve no idea. Pain is horrible, but happiness is bigger.

TELLER: Well done.

ABRAMOVIĆ: Titanium knee, titanium shoulder, titanium hips, who cares? I want to live to 110.

DOVILE DRIZYTE: Marina is like a RoboCop or something.

ABRAMOVIĆ: Wait, there’s [a photo of] the pope behind you. 

TELLER: There’s the pope, yes, with Dovile.

ABRAMOVIĆ: Wow. I’m very shocked.

DRIZYTE: Well, that’s nice to shock you Marina. I don’t think it happens often.

ABRAMOVIĆ: Can we actually start with how I actually knew about Juergen? Because it’s really important people see why we are doing this interview in the first place.

TELLER: Yes, it’s good.

ABRAMOVIĆ: So, Juergen my dear, every time I open a magazine and I see something that I absolutely could not understand what the product is, it was always you. It’s unbelievable. You actually succeed in making a product invisible. If you are showing a Prada bag, you show half of the body, you show a little leg and then some shadow and a tree. It’s so incredibly interesting for me, because you really find different ways of presenting things, seeing things, different than any photographer in these fashion magazines. You open them and it’s always the same kind of structure, how photographs are made. Why don’t you say how you came to the point that you are different from anybody else? This is why I like to talk to you.

TELLER: I just really deeply feel only how I can do it myself. Of course I have a responsibility to the client, but I can only do it my way and that’s really it. I don’t compromise. 

ABRAMOVIĆ: This is exactly why we are in this conversation together, because I don’t compromise. I can’t compromise to the market and I never did.

TELLER: That’s right. We can’t do anything else than what we deeply believe in. And I think it was a really beautiful moment when we met in our studio in London.

ABRAMOVIĆ: I’ll never forget. And that not compromising is really a story of my life. You never can put me in a box. I’m doing performances, then I’m doing opera, then I’m doing something else. It’s always something that interests me—not to please anybody. But I remember I was doing a Royal Academy show and I had to do so many photo shoots. One afternoon, I was with Shai [Baitel] working on our show in the studio and I said, “Oh my god, I have to go to this photo shoot.” So we got into the car, and it was raining and shitty, and I didn’t look at who the photographer was or anything. So first they do all this very elaborate makeup that takes an hour, then we look into the clothes, and I wanted to take these red gloves. The day before, some Hungarian people who saw my show sent them to me out of the blue. They were handmade by grandparents. We had all these clothes, the Prada and Dolce & Gabbana and Balenciaga, but I actually took my own coat and these red gloves. We went down to a courtyard with just three quite small trees and it was raining. And then, there came this man with a phone and he took literally three shots and said, “We are done.” And I thought, what? Where is the studio? Where is the light? What the hell is happening? And then I said, “Are you related to Juergen Teller?” And you looked at me and said, “I am Juergen Teller.” I was absolutely surprised. I was in the right spot with the right people. So for me to do an interview with you is a huge honor.

TELLER: And we met by chance in Milan before.

ABRAMOVIĆ: Oh my god, this was another drama. That morning, we had to leave to China, but China said no, we have to wait for some more control. You never know with the Chinese, more control. So we were stuck in the fashion week, and I was like, “What to do? Cry that we can’t go to China or go to every fashion show?” Which we did.

SHAI BAITEL: I couldn’t give Marina the news that we were delayed in going to China, so I made sure we were booked for every show.

ABRAMOVIĆ: But to go to the show means you get clothes from the same people. I end with the bags and shoes and coats and I have to gather them for the next five years of my life.

BAITEL: We were going from one show to another in such a short period of time. Marina insisted on changing inside the car at the traffic lights and I told Marina, “You’re naked,” and she said, “People saw me naked already.”

ABRAMOVIĆ: If you go to Versace, you can’t wear Fendi shoes, so I have to change. It was a mess. It was really entertaining. 

TELLER: Well, we knew we were going to China to do a fashion story for T Magazine and we arrived exactly on the day when you had the opening in Shanghai, and it was absolutely brilliant. And powerful to see unpublished work from The Great Wall Walk.

ABRAMOVIĆ: But also, when you came to see the show, you told me where you were going and I could not believe. You were going where?

TELLER: To Wuhan. [Laughs]

ABRAMOVIĆ: It was a place that nobody with a clear state of mind was actually going. And you go right there. Insane. But I want to say that if I didn’t work with Shai, the show would never have happened. For 25 years I was trying with so many different museums in Beijing and Shanghai to do the show, and always we had the proposal, and the museum said yes and the government said no. So I want to ask Shai how he succeeded to make something happen which was really impossible?

BAITEL: I’ll answer. You don’t know how it will all transpire in the end when you begin to conceive the project of this caliber. But I knew that I would be determined to have it approved. So when Marina and I began our conversation about the show nearly two and a half years before it opened, we were looking to create something that would be bulletproof. I was always curious about Marina’s crystal work, and how the stories relate to The Great Wall Walk, which we know today is a seminal work of Marina. We’re speaking about nearly four decades of her artwork, and there is an evolution both in the way the art is conceived and the ideology that it narrates. We started building the show when she was in London opening the Royal Academy show. I submitted everything to my board of directors in China requesting them to start conducting soft talks with the government, pretty much telling them we are planning to bring Marina for a show in China that is monumental, that was never done before, that will mark Marina’s comeback to China nearly 40 years after the historic walk on the Great Wall. And we received good feedback, so we proceeded, and we continuously submitted text and explanation and curatorial treatments and additional layers of work until the last phase when we received all the approvals while we were still in Italy, because Marina had a big opening at Bergamo Grace Art. I told Marina that from Italy, we’ll travel jointly to China. And then, I received a call from two of my directors who told me, “Wait, don’t come just yet, because we are requested to do a secondary review.” I was going crazy because the artwork was already in China and the construction was already completed. We also had to be in China nearly a month prior to the opening, because we had to train the facilitators—

TELLER: To guide them through it.

BAITEL: Exactly. So we were working on a very tight timeline. We pretty much saw every show during fashion week, and thankfully the approvals came just in time, and just before the opening we were able to accomplish everything. So the short answer is just determination and belief in the concept and in Marina, and for the Chinese people to see work that they deserve to see, because it’s really celebrating Chinese culture. The Great Wall of China, and the mythology stories that Marina heard during the three months of the walk.

ABRAMOVIĆ: One thing that was so important to me was the work ethic of Chinese people. It’s the same in my country. I’m really a product of communism. I was born in ’46 in Tito’s time. And Chinese have this same incredible discipline of labor, but here, the labor is not to create material goods, the labor is a transformation of spiritual achievement. If I say, “Open and close the door for three hours,” in Holland, they will give up in five minutes. When the people participate in the show, they really get an experience, and I could not imagine that better than in China, but I cannot show any photographs, any nudity, any performance work. So it’s a really radical show about transforming energy with objects and that’s it. We have never done anything like this before.

TELLER: And it was very successful.

ABRAMOVIĆ: It’s really successful because people bring their friends. The show is still on every day. 28th of March it’s closing. And then, we are hoping to travel in Asia.

TELLER: Where’s it going after?

ABRAMOVIĆ: We are trying to find out how to go to Beijing or Hong Kong or Singapore.

BAITEL: In ’26 it’s coming to a museum in Europe, which we cannot reveal the name just yet, and then it’ll continue to travel in Europe for a little bit, after which it’ll come to the U.S. So it’ll tour for the next few years.

ABRAMOVIĆ: I only hope that it never comes back to me, because I don’t have space to put it.

TELLER: But you did a really wonderful show catalog. It’s sensational.

ABRAMOVIĆ: To me it was really important that this show was dedicated to my parents who were national heroes, and there’s a really funny story with the Great Wall. When I was ready to go, I called my father and I said, “I’m going to walk the Chinese wall.” And he said, “Why are you doing this?” I said, “Because you walked the Igman March.” Igman March was the most famous march in the history of Partisans in the Second World War. They crossed a high mountain with two rivers in minus-25 degree and only 200 people survived, and in these 200 people was my father. So I said to him, “You walked Igman March, I’m walking the Great Wall of China, a little bit of competition.” So he said to me, “How long will it take you to walk the wall?” I said, “At least three months.” And then he said, “But how long did you think it took to walk the Igman March?” I had no idea. For me it seemed like forever. He said, “One night.” I was shocked. [Laughs]

TELLER: But the inspiration and the commitment of doing it and executing the idea is what matters.

BAITEL: This is the catalog that Juergen spoke about. I’ll send you one.

TELLER: Wow. And look, this is me in Wuhan, for the cover [of T Magazine].

ABRAMOVIĆ: Oh my god, I want to have this, please. How was it there? I want to know. 

TELLER: The people we worked with were incredible, professional, super enthusiastic and it was so wonderful to work with them. It was such joy. And we went to three different cities, Shanghai, Chongqing—completely crazy city—and Wuhan. And I will publish a book about this and you will be in it too because I took pictures at your exhibition in Shanghai. One picture at the opening when Shai’s brother [Dror Baitel, a musician] was playing the piano and your big pictures in the background. And then, there’s a picture of both of us looking at the crystals. And I included an archival picture that I took of you, one with the red gloves, and I put it together within the China book.

ABRAMOVIĆ: Beautiful. 

TELLER: Shai also asked us to have a show in Shanghai. Hopefully that is going to happen.

ABRAMOVIĆ: Hopefully. But minus that video you showed me in your kitchen. [Laughs] You have to have healthy compromises. We’re not compromising to have the idea to be absolutely safe. But, there are times that the healthy compromises will not hurt the project.

TELLER: Yes, you have to be cognizant about it.

ABRAMOVIĆ: Otherwise, that will never happen.

TELLER: Hey, Marina, did you know there’s a crystal fair in Arizona in February?

ABRAMOVIĆ: I know, and I went there many times.

TELLER: Oh, did you?

ABRAMOVIĆ: But my biggest dream is not just crystals. My biggest dream is to work with meteorites, that or a piece from Mars, but meteorites are so expensive. One really good piece of meteorite can go up to half a million. But that’s anything to come out of space. Yes, I went to this fair, an incredible fair, really.

TELLER: Wow.

ABRAMOVIĆ: The large meteorites mostly go to the museums. It’s impossible to buy them. I actually have a great source for crystals in Brazil, but meteorites are not easy. Nikola Tesla is my favorite scientist in the world. He communicated with aliens. I want to make a chair from meteorites that you can sit on, but I need somebody to sponsor. If anybody hears this from Silicon Valley, they can buy it for me for my birthday. [Laughs] I will be very appreciative. A little donation.

TELLER: And one thing I wanted to mention is that before we met, we made a trip to Belgrade to go and see your show, and we were really deeply moved and impressed.

ABRAMOVIĆ: You saw the show in Belgrade, The Cleaner? I didn’t know that.

TELLER: Yes. There was no other reason. We just went to see the show.

ABRAMOVIĆ: That show was very important, because for 47 years they never invited me. The young public loves me. My generation hates me. They can’t stand it. They could not understand it. First, I am a woman, I have such success, and then I left the country and I didn’t come back. So I really was very happy to go back, and I had buses from other countries, Macedonia, Ljubljana, and Slovenia, coming to see the show. Somebody said to me that I’m like a Tito putting all the country back together.

TELLER: [Laughs] Yes.

ABRAMOVIĆ: I left before Tito died, and then from one country, Yugoslavia became six countries. I’m always saying I’m from Yugoslavia, but this country doesn’t exist. I’m very fond of Slavic jokes because they have good black humor that is very important.

TELLER: Very good.

ABRAMOVIĆ: I think we covered everything. 

TELLER: Yes.

ABRAMOVIĆ: It’s very simple. We love each other and it comes from love. When are you coming to New York, in February?

DRIZYTE: February, March maybe.

ABRAMOVIĆ: I’m there all March, and in London all April. I’m doing something with Igor Levit, the pianist. Something completely different.

TELLER: Excellent.

BAITEL: She doesn’t stop.

DRIZYTE: She doesn’t stop.

TELLER: Nor me. Excellent. So good to see you.

ABRAMOVIĆ: Me too. Love.