I sat down with legendary performance artist Marina Abramovic who was in Toronto last week for the Canadian premiere of The Artist Is Present, a documentary on her work, which screened at the Reel Artists Film Festival. Click HERE to read part one of the interview.

Photo: Marco Anelli. Courtesy Show of Force.

VoCA: I asked people for some questions to ask you on Facebook, and one person wanted to know about your performance scars.  How do you feel about them today?  They mark a time in your life. Are you proud, indifferent, nostalgic?

You know I don’t even think about them. Each scar was a part of a performance. I have scars here (shows one on her wrist), but you know I never look back. Always forward. You know the only time I really feel old is when I make a book, and I have to look back at all the documentation and I say ‘Oh my god…’ I really don’t have nostalgia. It’s all about the now.

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I sat down with legendary performance artist Marina Abramovic who was in Toronto this week for the Canadian premiere of The Artist Is Present, a documentary on her work, which screens at the Reel Artists Film Festival this Sunday. Click HERE for tickets.

She is also setting up an institute for the preservation of performance art, in Hudson, New York. Stay tuned for more on that.

Marina Abramovic. Image: Moma.org

VoCA: Do you think we are headed toward the 4^th dimension – a new age of awareness where we go beyond the five senses?

That’s a good question. I believe we are in an entirely new system of truth. I really believe things are different, consciousness is shifting, and it’s connected. Most people don’t see these things, I mean apart from global warming, apart from the things going on with the planet. I really believe that consciousness is going to another dimension. I’m reading this science fiction book and I’m one of the characters in the book – I’m doing galactic performances on mercury or on asteroids. I asked the author how this idea came about? And he said The Artist Is Present is perfect for galactic traveling because it’s the same material.  I really feel that we have reached a point where the artist is…immaterial. It’s all about energy.

We are going to be aware of things, see things that we haven’t seen before…we on the border of creating a new system. Artists are the antennas of society, we are the function and we have a duty to deliver the messages..

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Tasman Richardson’s immersive installation at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, is on until April 1st in Toronto and I recommend you see it.

Tasman Richardson, Memorial, 2011. All images courtesy the artist.

Conceived in collaboration with curator Rhonda Corvese, the exhibition may make you reconsider what you had previously assumed about video art. The works in the exhibition use his micro editing technique, Jawa whose name is taken from scavenging characters in Star Wars, who according to Richardson “lived by stealing and rewiring old technology for personal use and for profit.”

The installation is very dark and you move between screens, across what feel like bridges and into room after room. None of the pieces have a concrete narrative; rather it’s about stopping in the presence of each one. There are six works in total: ANALOG TIDE, in which the viewer walks through a group of static-y televisions; FOREVER ENDEAVOR, an installation between two screens, each showing a woman from a movie (Poltergeist and the Ring) staring at one another. The third work is PARASEC, where dots of light speed down a hallway, creating optical distortions.

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