Who is Marina Abamovic - 07-12-2023
Episode Summary:
Marina Abramovic, born in Belgrade in 1946, is a performance artist infamous for extreme and shocking acts. Raised under harsh conditions, her work blurs the line between performance and ritual, with pain being her central theme. Her most controversial work is 'Spirit Cooking,' an occult ritual involving pig's blood and other gruesome elements. This practice gained worldwide attention when it was linked to Hillary Clinton's campaign manager. Inspired by occultist Alastair Crowley's practices, Abramovic carries forward his legacy. She has developed the Abramovic Method, a sensory deprivation practice to allow participants to experience her art firsthand. Notable followers include Lady Gaga.
Abramovic is a renowned artist known for hosting strange, often dehumanizing and humiliating events, attended by celebrities such as Lady Gaga, Hugh Jackman, and Winona Ryder. Her themes often border on the cannibalistic, with human-like cakes served at gatherings. Abramovic collaborated with Microsoft on an immersive mixed-reality project with the HoloLens Two, which despite immediate backlash, allowed users to experience a dystopian world she predicts as our future. A controversial figure, she has been seen posing with Jacob Rothschild in front of a Satan-themed painting, fueling conspiracy theories about her connections with the elite. Despite the controversy, her influence remains prominent.
Marina Abramovic was linked to convicted human trafficker and Brazilian faith healer, John of God, who claimed to perform psychic surgery. Known initially for his feature on Oprah Winfrey's show, he was later exposed as a serial rapist and trafficker of babies from imprisoned pregnant women. Abramovic created a documentary about John of God, titled "The Space in Between." Despite claims that she's not a satanist, her works have often disturbed audiences. Her connection with controversial figures and elements, including an allusion to "the Beast" from Revelation in her Twitter handle, continues to spark discussion.
Who is Marina Abamovic - 07-12-2023
Piles of bones, snakes, blood splattered across walls. What you're looking at aren't scenes from a horror movie, but works from a so called performance artist. An artist who also rubs shoulders with some of the most celebrated and influential figures in our society. I from famous actors and musicians to DC powerbrokers and international financiers. Her name is Marina Abramovic and her work has been featured everywhere from the Metropolitan Museum of Art to a Microsoft commercial.
But who is she? And why does she possess such enigmatic appeal to the world's elite? I am obsessed with this woman. She is so incredible. It's time we investigate who really is Marina Abramovic.
Marina Abramovic they call her an artist, but what she does is shocking. Cutting herself, burning herself, and other such extreme and grotesque acts. Abramovic was born in the Serbian capital of Belgrade in 1946. Hers was a harsh childhood. Her mother, a Communist Party official and military veteran, was cold and oppressive.
I was so incredibly unhappy as a child. We never sit together as a family. We never talked together. We never had any kind of Christmas, New Year together. It was always very unpleasant, very tense situation.
There's something wrong with me. She was always thinking that I'm doing something wrong here. And she absolutely hated this total control of my mother, total obsessional discipline, which I had opposed of me. I had to have my own space. I have to kind of let it free.
Abramovic began her artistic career in the 70s. While living in Serbia, she gained fame in the art world by performing extreme acts of endurance and pain, billing it as performance art. But you might say that pain is Marina Abramovich's medium and her message deal with it. Back in 1973, she rhythmically jabbed the spaces between her fingers, at times drawing blood. She almost died in 1974 when she laid inside a burning star, losing consciousness due to smoke inhalation.
In another famous performance, she stood motionless for 6 hours while attendees were encouraged to freely interact with her in any way they please, using a variety of 72 items provided. I was standing there in the middle of space with this table with objects. I put the objects on the table, very carefully chosen because the objects was for pleasure. And there was also the objects for pain and objects that can bring you to death. It was 6 hours of real horror.
Abramovic recalled saying they would cut my clothes, they will cut me with a knife close to my neck and drink my blood and then put plaster over the wound. The act ultimately resulted in a guest placing a loaded gun to her head.
Her performances take on a distinctly dark and often occult feel, frequently blurring the line between performance and ritual. In the 90s, Abramovic started doing a work she dubbed Spirit Cooking. Spirit Cooking later evolved into a form of dinner party that Abramovic occasionally puts on for collectors, donors and friends. In 2016, spirit cooking became known worldwide after WikiLeaks released emails showing John Podesta, then presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's campaign manager, was invited to participate in this sick and bizarre event. The invitation was sent to John Podesta's brother Tony by the originator of spirit cooking, Marina Abramovic.
The leaked email reads as follows I am so looking forward to the spirit cooking dinner at my place. Do you think you will be able to let me know if your brother is joining? The act of spirit cooking, which Abramovic was so looking forward to, involves using pig's blood and sometimes consumption of bodily fluids as a way of connecting with the spiritual world to cook up dark energies rather than food. It also at times involves other ritualized acts such as cutting oneself. One spirit cooking recipe reads with a sharp knife, cut deeply into the middle finger of your left hand.
Eat the pain. In this photo, Abramovic proudly displays the bandaged middle finger of her left hand. This YouTube video, with over 2 million views shows Marina performing a version of spirit cooking at an art exhibit. She uses animal blood to write cryptic verses on the wall. In one grotesque scene, she pours a bucket of blood over an effigy of a child.
She said she uses pig's blood because it is the closest to that of a human. Black magic groups including Santoria and Voodoo frequently use an effigy instead of the real thing in their workings. But in order to understand spirit cooking, we must take a look at Alastair Crowley and the Religion of Thalema. Thalema is a pagan occult doctrine created by Satanist Alastair Crowley in 19 Four. In Philema, the Eucharistic host is called a cake of light and is made from flour, bodily fluids and sacred oils.
This is known as spirit cooking. Philema is an occult order that attracts many influential artists. A great deal of rituals are sexual in nature. Crowley himself was ran out of Italy in 1923 by Mussolini when word of the practices at his de Lima compound in the Sicilian countryside got out, a compound he named the Abbey. As people of the abbey continued to lose their inhibitions, the sex magic rituals Crowley asked them to perform became more and more extreme.
Probably the most controversial and lurid episode in the whole chefaloo period is the tempted copulation between one of his scarlet women, Leah Hersig, and a goat. Now supposedly at the time of orgasm, the goat was to mount Leah Hersig and at the time of orgasm it was to have its throat cut. You can wonder whether what he was trying to do was a to test the dedication of his disciples to see how far he could push them.
The goat, the symbol, of course, of Satan normal man and woman is repulsed by this sort of thing and we wonder what actually can bring human beings to this. And I think what had happened was that in the abbey. They had sated or satisfied so many of their appetites all the time they were going just that bit further until eventually they were copulating with animals. And I suppose when you get to that stage it is symbolic of the depth of evil.
Things started to go wrong at the Abbey. Crowley struggled with his growing drug addiction. Leia had a nervous breakdown, but what Crowley called the great work had to go on. Rao Loveday was an Oxford graduate who broke away from his middle class background and came to Sicily with his wife. He wrote to his parents that he was happier at the abbey than he had ever been.
But Loveday fell ill and died after allegedly drinking the blood of a cat sacrificed in a ritual. His wife left Sicily and went straight to the British press Crowdy's. Little Squatted Piece of Heaven collapsed due to one of the earliest tabloid attacks. Eventually, of course, it was Mussolini who kicked his little crew out. Today, Marina Abramovic carries on his legacy.
Abramovic has even developed a kind of training course she calls the Abramovic Method, which involves a form of sensory deprivation and dissociation. Those who subject themselves to her method must stand, sit or lie motionless while wearing noise canceling headphones and sometimes an eye mask.
Subramoid experiment is a kind of summary of all different knowledge I have through the 40 years of my work to bring the public to the point of experimenting for themselves. We build three basic objects to create three basic positions of human body, which is standing, sitting, lying. All attendees of the Abramovic Method must sign a contract saying they will stay for at least 2 hours. Public have to sign the contract with me. They have to give me the word of honor they will stay in installation without leaving for entire 2 hours.
After this I will give them certificate of accomplishment to obtain them for the trust. Lady Gaga is an Abramovic method graduate.
Abramovic is also known for hosting bizarre events attended by celebrities and the wealthy. These events often include themes of dehumanization, humiliation and even cannibalism. One such event inspired by Abramovic's work took place in the Hamptons in 2013 and was appropriately named Devil's Heaven. This sick party featured nude models covered in syrup, which wealthy guests were encouraged to eat off their bodies with spoons. Separate scenes included nude men and women running and hiding in the woods, bodies painted to look like objects and other such degradation.
Most disturbingly, children attended and witnessed it all. Abramovic was front and center, accompanied by Lady Gaga. Other guests included hugh Jackman, Winona Ryder At, Alan Cumming These images are from another event in 2011, the annual fundraiser Gala for the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art put on by Abramovic. At this event, she made no attempt to hide the cannibalistic theme, as guests ate cakes designed to look like human bodies with real people's heads on top low paid female models were spread nude on the tables as live objects, while tickets went for 25,000, 50,000, or even $100,000. For those sitting at the round tables reserved for $100,000.
Ticket holders like then California governor Jerry Brown and Will Ferrell, the centerpieces were rotating platforms. Upon each, a live nude woman was covered with a life sized human skeleton. Other celebrity guests included Debbie Harry of the band Blondie, Pamela Anderson, kirsten Dunce, nicole Ritchie and Gwen Stefani. The cakes make more sense when one recalls the cakes of light used in Crowley's religion of Thalima. If this is what the elite got up to in front of the camera, just imagine what depravity takes place in secret.
Like many stars, Lady Gaga has repeatedly expressed her admiration for Abramovic and her work. Our next question is by Marina Abramovic in New York. I was just speaking about her today. I am obsessed with this woman. She is so incredible.
Her question for you is, it's quite abstract. Who creates limits? We do. We create our own limits. She is a limitless human being.
Another Abramovic enthusiast is James Franco. Franco conducted an interview with Marina in 2009. Notice the look he gives the camera when he mentions that she will be feeding him dessert. We're here to meet a different kind of performer, marina Bromwick, and some people describe her as the grandmother of performance art. But tonight I think she's going to make me some dessert.
Franco also sat shirtless and allowed Marina to cover his body with honey and gold foil, the spiritual symbolism of which, although implied, is unclear.
Kim Kardashian is another abramovic fan. Kardashian is featured in numerous photos with Abramovic. But as time passed, events changed and the dust settled. The powers that be thought the public had forgotten about their favorite witch. But as Bill Gates and Microsoft found out, nothing could be further from the truth.
It all started on Good Friday, April 10, 2020, when Microsoft launched a new ad for their mixed reality headset, Hollow Lens Two. The ad starred none other than Marina Abramovic and focused on her and her quote unquote art. More than the headset itself, this was a unique opportunity to take the most legendary artists working now and capture them in such a way that they are translatable forever. I believe that art of the future is art without objects. It's just pure transmission of energy between the viewer and artists.
Here I am kept forever. The backlash from the public was immediate and intense. Angry viewers flooded Twitter demanding the ad's removal on YouTube. The video garnered 26,000 dislikes and a little over 600 likes. Microsoft was forced to pull the ad completely and flat out refused to comment on the incident any further.
But what is this mixed reality Abramovic is so excited about? And what artwork has she created with Microsoft's Hollow Lens Two? Mixed reality is a type of virtual reality that uses hardware such as microsoft's HoloLens Two to combine digital imagery with the real world, abramovic created a mixed reality experience dubbed the Life. When users put on the headset, they experience a world entirely of her creation, a world she describes as dystopian and predicts will be reality in the future. With virtual reality technology, players will be immersed in a dystopian world that seems increasingly likely to be the future of our planet.
In this virtual space, users see Marina trapped inside a tank as it slowly fills with water. Players can choose to save her or watch as she drowns. A sort of perverse 3D video game for the sick elite.
This video game will present players with opportunity to save lives in urban landscapes radically altered by catastrophic flooding. You're saving the human being and you're saving the planet, or you're not saving the planet and you make human being die, and the choice is only yours.
Christie's auction house plans to sell the work for over $700,000. Marina is the subject of many creative photo shoots, each with her unique artistic touch. In one image, she covers her face with two large boa constrictors, making sure to cover one eye. The serpent, of course, is laden with spiritual and occult symbolism.
Others depict her with devil horns and holding up a severed and mutilated Ramshead. But her most troubling photo shoots are undoubtedly those involving children. One shoot, done in 2008, features Abramovic staring directly into the camera, while on her lap sits a child holding a gun. She said the work is designed to address the topic of violence. In another, a shirtless male child stands with his eyes covered by Abramovic, whose black clothed figure towers menacingly over him.
But if all the events, artwork, and depraved performances weren't blatant enough, abramovic took it one step further and more or less confirmed everyone's suspicions when she posed for a picture with Jacob Rothschild himself in front of a painting of Satan. You cannot make this stuff up. The enormous painting entitled Satan Summoning His Legions was created by Thomas Lawrence and is featured in London's Royal Academy of Arts Museum. Jacob Rothschild is particularly relevant as he and the extraordinarily wealthy Rothschild family are key figures among the shadow elite. It has long been speculated by researchers that the secretive Rothschild family was the hidden force behind many world events.
A cursory search of the Internet reveals a plethora of conspiracy theories. The Rothschilds. They are the hidden power which controls other well known banks such as Warburgs, Schroeders and Lazars, as well as being behind American financiers such as J. P. Morgan, the Rockefellers, Kune, Loeb and Company, the Spires and the Lehmans, not to mention the bank of England and the Federal Reserve System.
It might be thought that a serious banking history should Scrupulously avoid reference to this kind of nonsense. Yet it is impossible to appreciate the need for a scholarly history of the subject if one blithely pretends such myths do not exist.
It was in a Rothschild mansion, after all, that Stanley Kubrick filmed the infamous party scenes in Eyes Wide Shut.
The Rothschild Foundation lecture series even sponsor Abrovic, calling her one of the most important performance artists in the world. Jacob Rothschild rarely comes out of the shadows. Unlike other elites, he isn't photographed with celebrities or politicians, but he does pose with Marina Abramovic. And so it is not a mere coincidence that they pose together in front of a painting of Satan himself.
The painting, completed in 1797, is based on a scene from John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost, in which Satan calls to his compatriots crying, awake, arise, or be forever fallen. Are Abramovic and Rothschild suggesting that they are among such legions.
Marina Abramovic was also closely connected to notorious Brazilian faith healer and now convicted human trafficker John of God. Juan Texiera de Faria was a spiritual leader in the village of Abadiana, Brazil, who went by the name of John of God and performed a type of spiritual healing he called psychic surgery. He claims to have healed millions of followers since the his real fame came when Oprah Winfrey featured him on her show. The series since removed from Winfrey's website was titled do You Believe in Miracles?
It was later revealed that not only was Faria a serial rapist, he was actually running a baby farm in which pregnant women were kept chained to beds. Their babies eventually sold on the black market. He's known as John of God, a celebrity faith healer whose followers claim he can miraculously cure diseases such as cancer. But now the once beloved guru is accused of sexually abusing hundreds of women. And that's not all.
Horrific allegations of baby trafficking and murder have also surfaced. In a case that's sending shockwaves around the world, marina Abramovic traveled to Brazil and filmed a documentary focusing on John of God and his culture as a medium and sitting in Karen.
The documentary, entitled The Space in between, features Abramovic donning white clothing, meditating, and attending spiritual conferences with John of God. But we are to believe that she, like Oprah, had no idea what he was really up to?
Abramovic has admitted when asked by everyday people what she does, she often lies. If I'm in a plane sitting next to some jerk, I would say, I am the nurse from New Zealand and I come to your country to discuss your health program or something. So nobody talks to me because it's so impossible to say to any human being what I'm exactly doing. As for the allegations of occultism, Abramovic says she is not a satanist, saying, quote, anybody who wants can read my memoirs and find out that my work is far from Satanism. But millions of people have examined her works and performances and come away deeply disturbed.
When archaeologists and anthropologists want to understand a culture or a society, one of the first things they consider is its artwork. What does it say about us as a society that this is the artist we celebrate, put in museums and call one of the greatest of her generation?
One more interesting fact inspired by the Beast. In the book of Revelation, alastair Crowley dubbed himself the Beast. Six six six. Abramovic's Twitter handle is abramovic. M six six.
Just a coincidence. I'll let you be the judge.