For more information on the life and works of Marina Abramović, visit my Marina Abramović Youtube channel here.
Top 5 Video Picks:
1. In Your Face: Interview: Marina Abramović:
This is a fascinating interview with Abramović. She talks about everything from her beginnings as a performance artist, her collaboration and relationship with fellow artist Ulay, her celebrity collaborations, to her current performance works and upcoming Marina Abramović Institute. This is a wonderful video whether you have just heard of Abramović, or you have studied her in depth and are interested her perspective on how she and her work has changed since the 1970s.
2. Marina and Ulay Archival:
In 1976 Abramovicć met German artist Ulay, and for the next decade, until they dramatically parted ways in 1988, they collaborated in a series of performance works where they presented themselves as a single, androgynous being called Ulay-Abramović. This was a formative decade for Abramović, and in this video she discusses both her performance work leading up to when she first met Ulay, as well as the themes and ideas that developed during their time together. This video spans their entire relationship together leading up to Abramović’s 2010 retrospective at MoMA, The Artist is Present, where Ulay made a surprise appearance.
3. Body Art: Meet Performance Artist Marina Abramović:
While be warned, this video is slightly corny (it is from an interview conducted for CBS Sunday Morning), it does provide a nice overview of the life and work of Abramović, from her childhood in Belgrade, up to her present endeavors with the Marina Abramović Institute.
4.Marina Abramović: Embracing Fashion | “Exclusive” | Art21:
The premise of this video is a discussion with Abramović about her current love of designer fashion, a fact that has earned her criticism from other artists and art critics as a sign of “selling out.” However, this video by Art21 is much more than a discussion of fashion. This video provides a great, concise overview of Abramović’s early performance works of the 70s and 80s, including phenomenal video clips from the performances so that you don’t need to rely solely on written descriptions of the works.
5. Marina Abramović: The Body as Medium:
For years Abramović studied drawing and painting, first at the institute in Belgrade, and then in Zagreb, where she finally was exposed to performance. In this short video, Abramović talks about when she first discovered the medium of performance and use of the body. It includes images of her early paintings, which were often of abstract clouds, voluptuous women, or car crashes.