Marina Abramovic/Ulay

Participants in 'Alles...' talk at the Schqeizerhof, Bern about their Great Wall of China work

from Audio Arts Magazine Volume 7, Number 4, 1985

Transcript

William Furlong We’re in the Schweizerhof Hotel in Bern. Marina Abramovic and Ulay are also here. Marina, I’d like to talk about what are you currently involved with?

Marina Abramovic Our life is quite crazy, all the time travelling and doing different projects. I’d prefer to talk first of our future, then about the past, then we come to the present. So the future project, our life project, which we are preparing now, with a lot of complications to get realized, is the Great Wall of China. Did you hear about this project? No? When we were in Australia in 1981 we got this idea to do the Chinese Wall project. Actually it starts from the point when we read somewhere in the newspaper that when the astronauts saw the only visible spot on the earth made by human hands it was the Chinese Wall. They could not even see the Egyptian pyramids, just nothing, only the Chinese Wall. So we got the idea, why don’t we walk this Chinese Wall. Ulay would start from one side and I would start from the other side and we would meet in the middle. The wall is around 10,000 kilometres long so it would take a little bit more than one year for the meeting to come. Researching the history of the Chinese Wall we found out that it was made almost twenty centuries ago and rebuilt and built again, and responds completely to the Milky Way of our galaxy; that actually the beginning of the Chinese Wall presents the dragon head that corresponds to the dragon head in the stars and the end of the wall is a dragon tail that again corresponds to the dragon tail in the sky. So that actually it’s a kind of line to follow the Milky Way and it’s very much to do with the idea that all of the wall is made by divining forces. There were diviners looking for energy, the ley lines. Sometimes you see a completely flat valley and to our rational Western minds the wall would be just straight but they go completely like snakes, up and down, up and down, only looking for this energy line. The idea is also that we are going to be exposed to these energy lines for one year of time and see what that looks like. There would be only two types of documentation made. One would be satellite photographs taken in outer space. Perhaps with technology we can make such enlargements that we can practically see the person’s shadow on the wall from outer space. We would like to minimalize any technology while we are walking, so we would like to make only paper rubbings from the wall itself; this is how we are working, so Ulay will have one emotional response to the wall, he will make his paper rubbings, I will make mine and we will put together the two big … the one story from two parts. When we did try this, before, we found out that the paper rubbings and the enlarged satellite photographs would be exactly the same. So, now it is just the question of Chinese authorities and all the other things; this is our life project.

WF: Could we just talk a little about your travels to very remote places and your interest in remote civilizations?

MA: I’d just like to describe how we go to these countries, to such a place. Last year we went to the Thar Desert in Rajasthan, on the border of India and Pakistan. How we do this: we take the plane to Delhi, from Delhi we take again a plane to Jodhpur, the last plane that can go to Rajasthan and then we take the train to Jaislamer, where again is the last train station. Then we take the bus to another place where the last bus goes and then what is left is the camels. We go with the camels and then we come to the place where is no electricity, no Coca-Cola and absolutely nothing from our Western civilization, and then we are there and we stay with the real natives. So it is always a trip when we go farther and farther until we come to the unknown territory; then we are confronted with people who have just the most primordial form of life. All our experience and future work has developed from this kind of confrontation. This thing in the Thar Desert was just indescribable. We came there when there was a special festival that happens once every year when – water, of course, in the desert being very precious – they offered the water to the desert goddess, connected with the night of the full moon. So we went there and watched it, and after this we try always come back and if it’s possible make the work or just leave the impression and come to Europe and translate the work or to do the printings with this experience. But there was one point in Australia where we felt that it’s not enough to translate the work or to do the printings with this experience. We made a piece in Amsterdam (Night Sea Crossing/Conjunction, 1983), part of our Night Sea Crossing sequence, where we invited an Aborigine from the Central Australian desert and a Tibetan Lama to come to Amsterdam. They made the work with us. That was the first time there was the real confrontation of these two cultures; they had never met before. But also their confrontation with our European culture, in a way that was the most exciting experience, because, you know, artists like Picasso were inspired by African masks but they didn’t invite Africans to Paris. But we really prefer that way, direct confrontation.

WF: So when does the work concerning the Great Wall of China start?

MA: We began in 1980, we can say, and then we started to develop, to organize the whole thing. We made a foundation called Amphis with six board members and then we approached the Chinese government. Now we are in the very lucky situation that the Dutch government took this project as a proposal to China for cultural exchange and at this moment the delegation is in China. But it takes a very long for them to say yes or no, or even if they say yes it will take a very long time to actually happen because it’s a very complicated and restrictive state, China.

WF: So how long will the actual project take?

MA: When we start, we think about a year and a half. Because somebody discovered, we read three weeks ago in the newspaper, that the Chinese Wall is four thousand kilometres longer than it should be! [laughs] It’s really a very interesting little bit of news, but very crazy for us.