Marina Abramovich calls herself the warrior of performance art she uses her body as her paintbrush to learn about herself and Humanity testing what she can put herself through and how we will respond the woman who puts her body on the line now sees her body of work on display at London's Royal Academy this is another little piece from 1962 or five very old the first time its main galleries have been given over to a solo female artist can't even believe you know what we are witnessing here is the main gallery or the biggest show of my life and the 55 years of my career kind of big deal because at the beginning of your career you know people were saying performance art is an art now here you are I guess you've made it it's the mainstream you know there is a wonderful statement that I always like of the old Gandhi the first they ignore me the second they laugh at me the third they fight me and then I win the public has literally done all of that to Abramovich in 1974 she stood for six hours in front of a table with 72 objects at first the audience just gave her a rose by the end someone had put the gun to her neck I was 23 years old yeah and I was so angry I was so angry on how the people react to performance art and I want to see if I actually put objects on the table and I'm completely emotionless and asked probably to do anything they want with me and take full responsibility where this can go and I knew end of this performance which took six hours they can kill you 25 years later I made completely different work called artists is present where I actually give a complete restriction to the body they can sit with me they can look at me but they are no touch not allowed to touch may not talk to to cross that that kind of the the space between us the fact that you went from objects to nothing is also learning about Humanity in people yeah absolutely we all share the same body we all share the same fear the fear of dying fear of the pain and fear of temporarity that performance at MoMA in New York in 2010 saw thousands queue to sit opposite her proving that performance could draw bigger crowns than more traditional art people sleep outside of the museum they wait in the line for hours and hours to sit with me because we need human contact how many people live in London is how many people are actually the touch of society and how much pain is up there Abramovich was born in Belgrade in the former Yugoslavia one early piece of work saw her lie inside a burning communist star your relationship with with Communism and your childhood quite interested because on the one hand there is stuff like Rhythm five where you trace the star on the other hand you've also spoken about how you felt sad when you know Tito died in 1980. you notice that love and hate relationship it's really because it was very strong upbringing you know from mother and father who was strictly artists and communist my grandmother was highly spiritual and hate communism and that was between these two then I remember my father bring me to Tito Tito talks and I remember this strange kind of energy electricity goes through my body just listening him in the front of hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people so I started understanding what means talking to the or performing at the front of the larger public how the energy can be transmitted how you can use this energy and give it back so the all of these early experiences was all that I can use later on she responded to the Balkan war with a performance that saw her attempt to wash the blood from the bones of cows and she designed a Holocaust Memorial at babinyar in Ukraine it opened just months before the invasion by Russia it still stands today I remember so well the speeches of all the three presidents Israel Germany and zelensky from Ukraine are saying how this electricity should never happen anymore and just four months later the Christie happened is the bomb the the TV tower only 100 meters from the wall which is amazing that the wall is untouched when people talk about President Putin now and what he's doing Ukraine you know they say that he wants to recreate the Soviet Union how does that make you feel given that you know what that era was like you have to have to as an artist the larger Vision not just narrow vision of one event we always have to see that we live on this planet that is tiny little blue dot and we are still doing the same over and over again we're still killing each other there's still violence there's still hunger of this planet and we're destroying the planet in this exhibition abramovich's work will be displayed through recordings but four of her previous performances will be recreated by artists trained by Abramovich herself the Next Generation does that take away from the power that you feel when you you perform but what is your solution one day I die one day you die and then what you do we have to have some kind of recording of the of the past what really happened you know first of all artist is present is unique video installation because we are recording 1560 people who are looking at me in real time and you and I'm looking them in real time and then a part of that in a recording which is so honest because we don't kind of edit it at all is living elements in this in this role we are having 42 re-performance people who are performing my pieces also in real time and there you can see this work through Day Day story through their Charisma through their involvement and their energy and this is all I can do because I can't be there forever so you feel well optimistic about the future of performance art oh totally I think performance art is like Phoenix it's always coming out of his own ashes if you think about pyramid of art first of all music is the most immaterial and then come performance this this kind of Direct Energy dialogue is unbeatable Marina brandowicz thank you very much thank you