Marina Abramović: Interview to Tim Adams: art, pain, authority and her performance at the at the Royal Academy, London, 23 September-1 January;
Marina Abramović (November 30, 1946), becomes the first woman to have a full Royal Academy retrospective. She has spent a good deal of the past 50 years inflicting pain and stress on her body in the name of art. She has an institution in New York that teaches the "Abramović Method" to aspiring performance artists, a mix of mindfulness and consciousness-raising techniques, designed to unleash determination and creativity. Abramović grew up in communist Belgrade. She was born in 1946, the daughter of parents who had both been famous partisan fighters in Marshal Tito's army during the war. Some of her character was formed by her formidably strict mother. "[My mother] wanted to make me a warrior, so I would not suffer as she did. [...] She never kissed me in my life". In her teenage years, she started to rebel against [the] structures of home and church, and against the oppressive state. "I was against everyo...
