Kaunas in Lithuania is the European Capital of Culture 2022 and Marina Abramovic is the program's main number, currently with the exhibition Memory of being.
At the press conference, the war in Ukraine is the first thing she discusses.
Already on the first day of the war, she expressed her support for the Ukrainians.
And she has just auctioned off her work The artist is present, to contribute with humanitarian aid.
- We are dealing with a person like Putin, who can easily press the nuclear weapon button and start a third world war.
We live in a very dangerous moment in the history of mankind.
I feel, as an artist with intuition, that we are in danger.
I have never felt it before as I do now, says Marina Abramovic to SVT.
"Instagram is not art"
Marina Abramovic has been active since the 70's in the former Yugoslavia and she calls herself the grandmother of performance art.
With 50 years as an active artist behind her, she reflects on the future of the art form.
- Instagram is not art.
Zoom is not art.
As for NFT, so far it has only been about money, and I have not seen a really good work that touched me on an emotional level.
When I do, I will be open to it.
But money is not enough.
That art becomes a commodity is the saddest thing that has happened in art history, she says.
Finished with the pain
Her most famous work is The artist is present, which she set up at Moma in New York in 2010. She sat quietly on a chair and the visitors had to sit down one by one to just meet her gaze.
- People are afraid to meet others, afraid to stop thinking.
That's a huge problem.
People feel insecure when they sit on that chair and want it to be over as soon as possible.
Because you have to get rid of your fears and your anxiety first.
And it's all about time and investing energy, she says.
In the clip in the video player above, Marina Abramovic talks about the importance of suffering for art.
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This is Marina Abramović.
Photo: NTB / TT