I stumbled upon this odd but interesting piece by Abramovic via the amazing (and highly recommended) The New Yorker Presents series, I had heard of her previously through her project called The Artist is Present. The New Yorker Presents is, in my opinion, such a successful translation of a magazine to the big screen. It's so diverse, funny and insightful. The viewer is kept engaged because each segment is so different and captivating. Is this the beginning of the end of printed magazines?! Surely not. We won't need to be able to read soon, how frightening!
Anyway, back to this weird and wonderful piece by Marina Abramovic (next bit copied from Youtube):
"According to its creator, the piece Balkan Erotic Epic “is part of the studies about Balkan popular culture, as well as her own use of eroticism. Human beings pretends to become through it, in beings similar to gods. In popular culture -she continues- the woman is married to the Sun, and man with the Moon in order to preserve the secret of creative energy; through eroticism one gets in touch with the indestructible cosmic energy”.
In her research for this work, Abramovic consulted old manuscripts, and analyzed medieval pagan rites, rooted since the Middle Ages in Slavic culture. Then, and thanks to the collaboration of a Serbian film production, she did a casting with common people for these old rituals to be registered in film: “Obscene objects -says the artist- as well as male and female genitalia, have a very important function, linked especially to the rites of nature, as those linked to the fertility of the land and the emergence of rain. Men are not ashamed to show their erect penis or during ejaculation; in the same way that women showed their vagina, their ass, their breasts, and even their blood during menstruation. Western culture vulgarized these facts.”
Are you freaked out? Yeah, me too!
