Name: Marina Abramović Interview: Advice to the Young | Louisiana Channel
Uploaded: 2026-01-07T17:24:34.000Z
Duration: 8 min 46 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Modal verbs - A2

Oh, it's plenty of advice I can give the young artists, but

I think that one of the main, for me question is if somebody is artist at all.

The comparative

Because, you know, it's just you can proclaim yourself young artist, maybe you're not artist, or you can be, you know, better off doing something else.

So when I was teaching, this was one of the tests I will.

I will ask, you know, how you know you're an artist.

And you know, to know an artist or not is like a breathing.

You don't question breathing, you have to breathe.

So if you wake up in the morning and you have some ideas and you have to make them and this become like a kind of almost obsession and you have to create and you have this urge to create, you're definitely an artist, but

To be great artists, that's all different types of rules.

It's like it's nothing else in your mind till you realize the work.

And this is complexity of the intensity that you put into work.

And also, I think the great artists have to be ready to fail, which is not too many people do.

Because when you have success in a certain way, then the public accept you in a certain way.

You start somehow involuntary reproducing the same images, the same type of work, and you're not risking.

And the real artists always change their territories and they go to the land they've never been, and

And that failure actually is what makes this extra, you know, ready to fail that makes great artists.

And you know, again, you know, if you wanted to as young, you wanted to be famous and rich, then you just can forget even the idea of being an artist because the, you know, the money and the success is.

It's just a side effect and sometimes happen in your lifetime, sometimes not, but

doesn't, you know, keep you away from working.

I have this great example for me, really courage that you need the courage.

I think the most courageous act ever in the history of humankind, you know, to me was definitely Columbus, you know, going to discover America.

And then by mistake he discovered America.

But there was this, you know, he went there with his crew to little island called El Hiero.

In the archipelago, the Canary Archipelago.

And there was this night that this sailor's head, the last night before going to this explosion.

But in those days, the idea of the planet our Earth, that was a plate that you can fall off into unknown.

So they took this risk to fail from the plate of unknown and they discovered America.

I had a very old professor, really, which I love very much.

He said to me, if you are drawing with your right hand and you're getting better and better, and

you become virtuous, so that we do close eyes, you can draw anything you want, immediately change to the left hand.

Because when you become routine, that is end of everything.

And the second great advice, he said to me, you know, in your lifetime you probably will have one good idea.

If you're really good artist, and if you're genius, two good ideas, that's it.

When I was young, I would have different ideas to do work.

So I never wanted to develop kind of certain style that I would be recognized.

So have this obsession about one thing and then I had to do it.

And mostly I will do the work that I'm afraid of.

Because if you do things you like, you never change, there is nowhere to go.

You're always doing the same shit again and again.

But if you do things that you don't know, the things you're afraid of something really different, then it's really important to go to this different pattern and something different happen.

So I will get into these ideas that I don't know.

But the other things, you know, I made just to give example of one of my exercises for my students when I was teaching.

I would tell them that they will three months, they will buy hundred just sheets of paper and one rubbish can.

And every day in the same time, they will sit on the chair and write the good ideas.

And the one that they like, they put on the left side of the table.

And one they don't like, they put in the rubbish.

And after three months they all want to present me good ideas.

I'm totally not interested in good ideas.

I just took rubbish can and we look into rubbish can and every single idea was incredible.

So we realized that once the ones you reject, the ones you don't want to Deal with them.

But it's an interesting thing also how you know when somebody which media you should use.

Because you know you may be born painter and if you want to do performance doesn't work or you a sculptor.

So you have to know what media actually what tool is best for your expression.

So for me to recognize a good performance artist is really simple.

He can perform, idea can be totally shit, the execution can be wrong.

But it's just the way how he stand and that's it in the space, how he occupied physically the space.

And what that standing does to everybody else.

Looking at person, that kind of charisma, it really makes the difference.

It's a certain energy you can recognize right away.

And you can learn later on how to execute things, ideas and all the rest.

But it's about energy that you cannot learn, that you have to have it.

It's something that is just there when you're born.

One of the lecturer of Bob Wilson, when I was doing the theater piece with him, he was saying to the actors and to me, he said, when you're standing in one place and you're thinking to the next movement, you're already not present.

So this incredibly important lesson that when you stand standing in one place, you can't think of the next step.

The next step have to come with your body and mind together.

Otherwise you are actually missing that moment of presence.

So it's hard thing to do, but it's quite important.

There are lots of exercises you can do to reach that presence.

So let me learn you how to doing the vaja.

The vajra is something we drink every day, but not consciously.

It's not my choice, but that's what it is.

And what you have to do is hold the glass in your hand and close your eyes and just feel it.

The coldness and wetness of the glass itself.