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7 NO ILLUSIONS (ELLE Serbia, June 2014) PERFORMANCE ARTIST MARTA JOVANOVIC BRIEFLY VISITED BELGRADE THIS MONTH AND CHATTED WITH US ABOUT HER JUST PUBLISHED MONOGRAPH, JAMAICAN HOLIDAY AND FUTURE PROJECTS Even though she lives between Rome and New York and is one of the most important female performance artists in the world, Belgrade remains for Marta Jovanovic an important hub. Jovanovic always remains excited to return to her native Belgrade and always brings something new to it. With her performance Untitled (after Cut Piece by Yoko Ono), Marta inaugurated a group exhibition, Invisible Violence, at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade. The audience was instructed to cut a piece of Marta s clothing, actually a uniform, and keep it as a souvenir. Her goal being to share something material and thus to send the message I am the world, the world is me. Courageous? Yes. Pretentious? Absolutely not. The exhibition was only one of the reasons for us to meet in a beautiful garden on Dositejeva Street. Marta brought with her Untitled, a seven-month-old Cavalier King Charles Spaniel puppy that she never parts from. She is cheerful, spontaneous and direct. After we ordered coffee, Marta pulled out her cell phone and showed me photos from her recently discovered haven - Jamaica, where she spent one of the evenings laughing at the jokes Marina Abramovic told her. You never said publicly that you are close to Marina Abramovic and now I hear from you that you spent an entire evening with her where she told you great jokes. I am not close to Marina. I respect her work very much, but we remain from different generations and women of different sensibilities. She is a major star, so it is a great honor for me to be able to spend some time with her, let alone hang out on the beach bed for two hours listening to her tell jokes. As I said, I respect her work enormously, but I have my own story to tell and don t like to be compared to her or any other acclaimed artist, because it is my rule that I create space for myself on my own and not through the people that I know. You prove that through your work. From all your performances so far, in the last one you were the most intimate with your audience. Were you coldblooded? Honestly, no. I think that I became fully aware that what I was planning to do was not that harmless when the curator sent me an where he explained that they are preparing a contract that will state that the museum is not liable in case someone from the audience cuts off my nose, for example. (Laughs) I really didn t think about that. In performance the audience is extremely important, it is the audience that creates the moment. One can never predict the outcome and that is the exciting part. Some compare performance to theater, but it is not the same, in theatre all is planned, rehearsed and then the error might occur. In performance, on the contrary, there are no errors. To me performance is like life, there are no errors, only experiences. 11

8 Through your performance in MoCA Belgrade, the goal is to send a message that we should all get rid of uniforms and be ourselves regardless of the system. How much did you manage to remain faithful to yourself and in avoiding traps of the system? I consider myself lucky to have always been out of the system. I was never part of a political group or party and I never fought for someone else s ideals. At the end of the day, every political current involves masses in order to support the interests of a few. I am against any kind of absolutism, against any kind of ism that creates anxiety. I criticize any kind of oppressive system. I don t like to belong to the masses or groups; my only goal is the creation of human rights, freedom of expression and choice, regardless of, for example, skin color, sexual orientation, among other things. A large body of your work is focused on women. Can we conclude from it that you consider yourself a feminist? That is another -ism. (Laughs) I could not say that I am a feminist according to the definition of the term - I love to wear make up and high heels so often I am asked if I am a lipstick or a stiletto feminist, which is the worst. Let me explain my case: I am a woman and accordingly cannot see the world through the eyes of a man. That is why I believe my work is perceived as female as opposed to male. Personally, I like the malefemale tango. I like being a diva, to dress nicely and wear my Louboutin heels even though my eyes are about to pop out at how uncomfortable they are. I use Russian Red color lipstick and it is important for me to feel feminine. All of the above should not disqualify me in the fight for women s rights, correct? Let s be clear, I do not believe in the women of Pleasantville and I do not believe that we need to be smiling tender robots, but on the other hand we should also give a break to the workaholic concept that keeps us from becoming mothers. I believe that any woman, regardless of whether she has her own children or not, in one way or another finds the outlet of motherhood, as that is our nature. What or who is the object of that motherhood is a personal story. It is great to hear how much you love your body. Your body is also an instrument for your work. Do you have any limits or inhibitions when it comes to expression? When I perceive a given limit, I tend to break it. The more I feel unprepared physically for something, the more that something is a challenge to be taken. That is exactly how the performance in Rijeka happened. I personified the Italian poet Gabrielle D Annunzio in the performance. He was bold, so I shaved my head as well. I conquered the city on a mighty horse. I trained for months to be able to do it. It was a big transformation. What is your relationship with your body after the performance is over? I prepare for every performance for a long time, physically, intellectually and emotionally. In the particular case of the performance in Rijeka, my goal was to find all the possible points where my and D Annunzio s personality overlapped. I am not an actress so I did not want to imitate him but to personify him. My goal was to melt the two of us into one person. That process lasted until the actual performance. When the performance was over, it took me some time to mentally filtrate everything, in the mean time my hair also grew. Every performance is like that. In case I need to gain weight for the performance, in the cleansing period I lose it and vice versa. The balance always happens in the end. The best walk through your metamorphoses is your monograph Performing The Self that was presented in Belgrade on May 14. How do you feel when you take it in your hands? The making of that book was a very exciting moment in my career and my life. I turned 35 last year and got terribly scared because I thought it was the end of the chapter and then I heard something brilliant: the most beautiful are the first four decades of childhood. So, I still have plenty of time to play. Joking aside, this book made me very happy. Everything is in it: birth, work, marriage, death, all I think about and all I go through. The author of the book, Kathy Battista, approached my work with great enthusiasm and managed to present each of my works in an authentic manner and in the context of my personal history but also the history of the region where I was born. More than anything, I am delighted by her comparing my work to that of my 12

9 favorite performance artists Carolee Schneeman and Hannah Wilke who defined performance in the sixties and the seventies. That is a great honor. What are you working on at the moment? I am working on a project titled Artist Suit in collaboration with Kathy Battista and independent designer trio from New York threeasfour, who, among other things, create costumes for Bjork. They designed the artist suit that will be distributed to as many artists as possible around the globe. Aren t you someone who is against uniformity? That is exactly why I am doing it. The Art World is a very specific platform, in a way it is a snobbish society that works hard to maintain that reputation. If you walk down the streets of New York for example, you spot an art world person right away. They wear geek Ray Ban vision glasses, women wear maxi skirts, men very tight pants and jackets and pointy shoes. They all insist on individuality but instead they are practically wearing uniforms. That is where the idea comes from. Today, it is very important to brand yourself, how much you are worth, who you know, an artist is a celebrity and that is exactly the opposite of the idea of freedom. I believe that the first and only concern in the art world should be the project, the idea and the concept of it, and then the appearance and other things. When will we see you in Belgrade again? I like that to remain a surprise. I will be in touch as soon as everything is planned. Text: Jasmina Lazic Photo: Braca Nadezdic Fashion: Gordana Manojlovic Make up: Branislava Kostic 13