Marina Abramović: what is performance art?

Who better to consider what performance art is, what it offers and what it represents than one of its true pioneers; Marina Abramović.

The Serbian artist, whose work frequently explores the boundaries of artistic endurance and the relationship between the performer and audience, spoke to the Southbank Centre as she reflected on her more than five decades within the sphere of performance art and considered how it has changed her emotionally, physically, mentally and spiritually. 

In this interview Abramović considers the nature of performance art – how it demands that its audience be present and how it offers that audience a personal experience – and also how the practice has expanded and grown since her earliest performances to small audiences in cellars and spare rooms. She also gives an insight to what has become known as The Abramović Method, but what she herself calls ‘cleaning the house’; a deeply disciplined, highly committed approach to preparing performance artists for the endurance of longer durational pieces. 

This interview took place during the Marina Abramović Institute’s Southbank Centre takeover in 2023, a collaboration that saw original performance art from 11 artists not only fill the auditoriums of our Queen Elizabeth Hall but also the corridors, offices and foyers. Abramović discusses a number of the works which featured as part of this takeover – pieces by Collective Absentia, Yiannis Pappas, Aleksander Timotić, Miles Greenberg, Carlos Martiel, Paula Garcia, Paul Setúbal and Despina Zacharopolou – and the opportunity the event provided for these artists to be part of a larger scale project, helping to introduce them to new audiences and new fans.