More Hysteria, Please
RICHARD FOREMAN
Psychoanalysis?
ADRIAN DANNATT
The Pre-session of Ricki Lake
GARY DAUPHIN
The Lesbian Session
SLAVOJ ZIZEK
Poste Restante
RAPHAEL RUBINSTEIN
The studio: I chose this place as it was completely burned out. It literally didn't exist, there was no ceiling, there were huge gaps in the walls and the windows were all broken. So this was the best space for the studio as it was completely free of any past. Burned space is burned space, you can start over again.
The office: is to communicate with the outside world. For an artist it' s not enough just to make the work; you need to spend an equal amount of energy placing the work in the right space. The work has to be done for society, not for yourself-like children, it has to have life and independence at one point, so it has to get out of here.
The dressing room: in the early seventies it was no good for an artist to dress up and wear make-up. There was a kind of code for the way artists should look and behave-always very pale and very rough clothes. And this kind of judgment, especially with regard to female artists, still holds true today. If you need to have a glamorous image, you can have it and still be a good artist.
The bedroom: is very important. It took me a lot of time to find out where exactly it should be. Eventually I chose a room on the rear side of the house. The room is square with a high ceiling, full of air, space and light. I could never hang dark curtains in the bedroom, even if there is a lot of light when you wake up in the morning I like to go with the natural rhythms of the day. The bedroom should contain the bed and music-that's it.
Body conditioning space: we are always so afraid of exhausting our bodies, of pain, of dying. . . So when I am afraid of doing something, this is exactly what I should go for. Only in these moments you can break the patterns of your life, your habits, and experience something. The exercise is any kind of rhythmic exercise, based on repetition. Repetition generates a lot of power.
The kitchen: is also a place for non-eating. I like to experiment fasting for small periods of time-the absence of food. Our whole energy is always in the stomach-we need so much energy to digest things. But when you don't eat for several days, the energy finally gets the message that there is no food and starts rising.
The text is a summary after Marina Abramovic in The House is my Body
Illustrations:
Marina Abramovic, The House is my Body, 1995
Marina Abramovic, Still from Luminosity, Performance at Sean Kelly, New York, 1997
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