Marina Abramovic has lived without privacy at MoMA for 12 days on nothing but water; she’s invited strangers to use 72 random objects (including a gun with one bullet) on her in any way they want; she’s walked half the 5,500-mile length of the Great Wall of China to confront heartbreak. Her life as a whole has involved pushing herself to her physical and mental limits, and then going further. So it’s a surprise when, in person, she’s anything but intimidating. Within seconds, she’s asking about my right arm (in a sling from tennis-induced rotator cuff surgery) and then about the scar I have on the same arm (souvenir keloid from a childhood dog attack). “This is good,” she pronounces. “Scars I find the most interesting. I see no point in not asking right away — what happened?”  Abramovic, a Serbian artist born in 1946, is arguably the reason performance art is on the map as a genuine, recognized art form. Since her career began in the 1970s, she’s accrued critical recognition, a touch of infamy and multiple awards, including a Golden Lion at the 1997 Venice Biennale for “Balkan Baroque,” in which she attempted to scrub blood from an enormous pile of cow bones over a period of six days, evoking the enduring stains of war on her own country’s history as well as on a global scale. The participation and experience of the audience is an essential element of her work, as is her own body.  Speaking ahead of her lecture that evening as the featured guest for SITE Santa Fe’s 2016 Biennial Exhibition, “Much Wider Than a Line,” which runs through Jan. 8, 2017, Abramovic discussed “three Marinas,” her legacy — and what comes after 70.  You’re speaking tonight on the subject “My Life in Art.” Do you feel you’re at a point in your life, your career, where you’re ready to look back?  You know, it’s interesting. In November, I’ll be 70. It’s surprising it went like that, like time just vanished. There’s so much contradiction, because inside you’re still like a child. So immature. Still suffering for the same stupid things. And then at the same time you have to be grown up and responsible; you have to look back at what happened. The only time I really feel tired and old is when I look back; I always like to look just in the front of me. I’ll always feel like I didn’t finish enough, such a short time is left, and there’s still so much to do. And I’ve spent the last two years looking back because I’m publishing these memoirs that come out on the 28th of October.  All the contradictions I have as a person. I specify three Marinas: one who’s really spiritual and dedicated to the work, and another who’s a warrior and about breaking borders and going to unmarked territories, and the third is lots of sweets and lots of bad movies. Heartbreaks. Just a pain in the ass, basically. Lots of black humor and not politically correct, that’s for sure.  And all those three live in me. In the beginning of my career I was only showing one part, and then I understood that if I do performance, the only way I can reach the public and touch their hearts is to show all your vulnerability. Then the public can actually see themselves in me. There’s not any subject the public doesn’t know about me. I don’t have secrets, and this is so liberating, because this makes me free. So 70, for me, is the beginning of the last part of life, of this big journey, and I really want it to happen. I’m stressed until it finally happens.  You prioritize long-term projects and methods. What’s accomplished by slowing down?  Very rarely I talk about my work. But here in Santa Fe I made a lecture to talk about a few pieces that really changed my life. And when I started doing long durational works, everything changed. It was like the key to another universe. If you do absolutely nothing, just see what the incredible energy inside you will do. You’ll finally be with yourself, which we constantly avoid, because we’re afraid to face ourselves. I give the audience tools to look into themselves. I am the mirror. And that’s it.  And then we ask the main questions that we never ask: Why are we here, what is our contribution to this planet? When I do long durational performance, my proposition is that life is fast. Let’s do art slow.  You’ve said innocence can never be broken. How does your work reflect that?  It’s all strength, which is incredible. When you have heartbreak, what’s important is that you don’t go halfway. Go all the way down. Don’t take pills that keep you in limbo. Cry out all the feelings. Then your own energy for life will put you up again. You become stronger. I have this exercise that I propose to everybody: Hug a tree and complain for a minimum 15 minutes. Be yourself, and do something that you really feel deeply.  Oh god, the next is crazy for me. I have five big shows next year, and I’m making something over the next two years called “Seven Deaths.” In every opera, a woman dies for love. I’m going to make a staging of the whole thing — dying seven times for love and then surviving. I’ve been thinking of this piece for 25 years, and now I have the opportunity to do it. Then I’m finished with that — then I just have to do life.  This interview has been edited and condensed.  The SITE Santa Fe Biennial, “Much Wider than a Line,” is on view through Jan. 8 at SITE, 1606 Paseo de Peralta, Santa Fe, N.M., sitesantafe.org.
The performance artist shares what she’s learned as she approaches 70 and what her next project — “dying seven times for love” — will entail.