Recently, performance artist Marina Abramovic recreated twelve legendary performance artworks at the Guggenheim Museum. Now, New York Magazine interviews the artist about her experience of the show, including the hours she spent masturbating under a false floor as the audience partied overhead. Her new work, "Balkan Erotic Epic," is currently on view at the Sean Kelly Gallery in NYC.

In your last solo show at Sean Kelly, The House With the Ocean View, you lived in the gallery without food for twelve days. Tell me about the new work, Balkan Erotic Epic.

When I made House, it was such a radical piecepushing the limits as far as I could. After that, I just wanted to do something different. I went to the former YugoslaviaI was interested in the roots of the culture, which has a lot of pagan elements, and the idea of the erotic. How we see erotic today is so limited; we think erotic equals pornography. The woman with her breasts exposed is a kind of erotic thats very vulgar, very predictable, and we are fed by these very standard images. In Balkan culture, the sexual organs, male and female, were used as tools for taking evil away, connecting with the forces of nature. I found all these different rituals, going back to the sixteenth century, and staged them in a film. For instance: In the villages there would be lots of rain, which would damage the growing cornso all the women of the village, from the very young to the very old, would run into the fields and lift their skirts to scare the gods and make the rain stop. Its an amazing image. Theres nothing pornographic there, and it makes you see your own organs in a completely different light.

ZakSmith

Los Angeles, CA

August 2003

DEC 05, 2005 12:05 PM

The Fine Arts=making sex seem unsexy since 20,000 B.C.

Lemonkid

Canada

May 2003

DEC 05, 2005 06:12 PM

If I was a woman I'd be restarting a homegrown DIY "Vaginas for Corn" movement right now.

Quirky

Birmingham, AL

October 2005

DEC 05, 2005 06:21 PM

splixx said:
The Fine Arts=making sex seem unsexy since 20,000 B.C.

Transcend preconcieved notions of sex, and experience fine art.

ZakSmith

Los Angeles, CA

August 2003

DEC 05, 2005 07:33 PM

Taureolt said:

splixx said:
The Fine Arts=making sex seem unsexy since 20,000 B.C.

Transcend preconcieved notions of sex, and experience fine art.

Is there anyone who wouldn't rather transcend preconceived notions of fine art and experience sex?

pough

Vancouver, BC

April 2005

DEC 07, 2005 02:37 PM

Balkangirl, the Super Friend who never was. Cue female equivalent of Superman voice, saying: "My only chance is to expose the wet corn to the healing powers of my vagina!"

And now I'm trying to imagine the sound effect they'd use for that one...