Well known for being the woman who ‘let the public do anything to her’, Marina Abramović has an outrageous plan for when she dies.
The Serbian performance and conceptual artist often shocks people and pushes boundaries with her art, once having ‘nine orgasms’ in a museum as part of her 'Seven Easy Pieces' in 2005.
In 2002's 'The House with the Ocean View' she spent 12 days living in an art gallery with no food or privacy, while in 'Rhythm 0' she said she was ‘ready to die’ if it came to it.
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And while that didn’t happen at the hands of the audience allowed to use various objects on her, Abramović does have plans for when her final day comes.
Now 78 years old, the artist delivered a key note speech in Sydney back in 2015 where she revealed the plans for her own funeral.
Abramović read out her manifesto and declared that ‘an artist should die consciously without fear’.
With her work described as exploring body art, endurance art, the relationship with the audience, the limits of the body and the possibilities of the mind, she said a funeral is ‘the artist’s last piece before leaving’.
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“You should think about everything,” she added, explaining artists must give instructions so it all goes the way they intended.
For Abramović, that means having ‘three Marinas’.
“Of course, one is real and two fake because you can’t have three bodies. But I want these three Marinas buried in the three cities which I’ve lived [in] the longest, which is Belgrade, Amsterdam and New York,” she explained.
And with three ‘Marinas’ dotted about the globe, nobody would know which one is the real body.
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The artist was prompted to make an ‘entire script’ for her funeral after going to the ‘saddest funeral’ ever for her friend.
“I went back to New York and went straight to the lawyer and said my funeral is going to be like this,” she added.
That ‘script’ for her funeral includes the mourners having to wear bright colours, ‘even’ pink, joking they wouldn’t actually be dressed ‘like a cockroach’ in her trademark black.
She continued: “I want Antony [Hegarty] of Antony and the Johnsons, who is a great singer and friend of mine ... to sing ‘I Did It My Way’. He never said yes but I think he will be so sad that I die he will probably do it.”
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Over her decades-long career, while planning for death, Abramović says she ‘never looks back’.
“I only look in the future because when I look back, I think I should be dead by now,” the artist added.
Topics: Marina Abramovic, Art
Jess Battison