«SI am always attracted to new adventures, to delve into unexplored territories.” Marina Abramović surprises again, this time as an actress in the short film Spirits of Maritime Crossingwritten and directed by Professor Apinan Poshyananda, recently premiered at Smaff (the Sankt Moritz Film Festival dedicated this year to the theme “Becoming Landscape”, artistic direction by Stefano Rabolli Pansera). An unprecedented experience for the artist internationally famous, pioneer of performance, who has made his body an artistic instrument since the seventiesat the SKC Student Cultural Center in Belgrade, Serbia.
The universal body by Marina Abramović
«I was lucky to have discovered my way of expressing myself right from the start. As a child and young adult I thought I was ugly, with flat feet and a too-wide bottom, but when I started my performances I overcame everything. I no longer cared about how my body looked, I presented a universal one, which could be thin, fat, young or old without difference. It was valid for itself and not for its form. In front of the public I found the energy to establish an emotional dialogue, face the physical limits of the body. I’ve been through some tough times, but I learned that physical pain can be controlled, while emotional pain is more difficult to tolerate. I realized, over time, that I had to engage viewers and exercise my mental energy. A path that led me to build the Marina Abramović Institute (NEVER). In this film, however, I limited myself to following the directions.”
Spirits of Maritime Crossing
It was an absolute first in many ways: world first for the film, for the artist as an actress and for Poshyananda, Thai scholar, artist and artistic director of the Bangkok Art Biennale, as a director. An undertaking resulting from a long friendship and the idea of recount a journey of rebirth from one water city to another, from Venice to Bangkok and back. It is the opportunity for a conversation with Abramović, who during his itinerary delves into the spiritual meanders of Eastern Venice guided by an unexpected Virgil.
Spirits of Maritime Crossing, 2023 Image courtesy Bangkok Art Biennale Foundation
«I accepted, without even knowing what I should have done. This story intersects places connected to events in my private life. Venice, seen for the first time at 14 with my mother – bursting into tears as soon as she left the station, overwhelmed with emotion in the face of so much beauty – and where I staged my Balkan Baroque performance at the 1997 Biennale. Bangkok, frequented over the years visiting monasteries and dedicating myself to meditation” says the performer.
A trip from Venice to Bangkok
«I wrote a screenplay thinking of Marina as the charismatic protagonist of a journey from a painful Venice to Bangkok and back, like an odyssey to move from a state of pain, symbolized by a black robe, to one of purification and rebirth, with a white robe, after a series of stops through sacred places in the city” explains the director. «It was difficult and fascinating to accept being directed into this immersion in Thai culture and traditions» underlines Abramović.
Spirits of Maritime Crossing, 2023. Image courtesy Bangkok Art Biennale Foundation
His interlocutor and guide on the spiritual itinerary is Monkey Lord, played by the Thai dancer and choreographer Pichet Klunchun, wearing traditional Thai dance theater costume and mask. Two powerful physical presences who appear sitting one in front of the other (with a reference to the performance “The artist is present” at MoMA, in 2010). «The moment Klunchun turned to the audience, I realized that each of us contemplates our own death».
Marina Abramović’s commitments
The film is only a parenthesis in the artist’s tireless activity, now engaged for four months in London, where at the Royal Academy of Arts, the Marina Abramović exhibition has just opened (until January 1, 2024). It is the first time in 255 years that the institution has dedicated a large-scale exhibition to a female artist in its Main Galleries, which until now have only welcomed male artists (such as Anish Kapoor, Antony Gormley and Anselm Kiefer). «It is the largest exhibition of my life after the MoMA one, and welcomes my most important performances in dialogue with each other, relating to different aspects of my work, plus a program of my live performances, staged by young artists.” It does not end here.
A very special event is planned for October 9th: a tea (by invitation) with Marina, open only to women. «It will be a marathon. I also have a series of conferences planned, long-form performances with the MAI in the Southbank Center and the presentation of two new books (a visual biography and a travel diary), while the English National Opera will host for the first time my opera project 7 Deaths of Maria Callas. But I prepared myself.
Spirits of Maritime Crossing, 2023. Image courtesy Bangkok Art Biennale Foundation
As I’ve gotten older – I’ll be 77 on November 30th – I’ve started to love my body more and take care of it. Every year I go to India for Ayurvedic retreats. After having tried many, for a decade I have been attending the Ayurvedic hospital in Kochi, Kerala, where among other things an art biennial takes place. A month entirely dedicated to restoring my psychophysical balance. I’m also careful about what I eat, apart from – I confess – chocolate. After all, I’m full of contradictions. When you face the last part of your life you try to imagine the time you have left. Retire? NoI think I will work until the end and therefore I accept my current physique.”
The training built over the years
A determination, with deep roots in his family history, which has always distinguished the artist, capable of rigorous physical and mental training, preparatory to performances, such as total fasting during the day for a year, to prepare for the MoMA performance. A training built over time, which helped her to overcome even very difficult moments, finding inspiration in nature and ancient culturesliving with the Australian Aborigines, spending long periods with communities of Tibetan monks or visiting the shamans of Brazil.
«Sometimes I just need to feel life through my every pore» he writes in his book Walk through walls. An autobiography (Bompiani 2018). Like when after a long Ayurvedic retreat she immersed herself in the ocean waves. Coming out of the water she felt full of energy, bright. Entering the trees, “the roar of the waves faded, and suddenly I heard the living beings around me: everything was life.”
iO Donna © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED