Marina Abramovic: Balkan Epic

by Adelina Von Furstenberg, Steven Henry Madoff

Marina Abramovic was a pioneer in the use of performance art as a visual art form. The body has always been both her subject and medium. Exploring the physical and mental limits of her being, she has withstood pain, exhaustion, and danger in the quest for emotional and spiritual transformation. This volume documents Abramovic's Balkan series of video installations and performances created in the period from 1997 to 2005. The works confront us with the gaps between hope and total destruction, with heroism, idealistic passion, human warmth, and almost unbearable static situations. In her latest work, Balkan Erotic Epic, Abramovic creates new, surprising perspectives on archaic rituals that used erotic powers to influence fate and fortune. These powerful images talk to us about the disavowal of ancient practices, and about something buried deep in our consciousness.

Genres: Art

112 pages, Paperback

First published September 5, 2006

Reviews

[Rena]

This review is for the book "Marina Abramović: On the Erotic" (Bierke Verlag). I'm using this as a workaround, just like the reviewer before me, since the book isn't (yet?) to be found on Goodreads.

It was published alongside the exhibition Balkan Erotic Epic at Gropius Bau, Berlin, in 2026, which I recently visited. It contains an interview with Marina Abramović, conducted by the Gropius Bau's director and an art director; some excerpts from Abramović's work Spirit Cooking, and essays by various authors.

I bought it after my visit, since the exhibition had moved me and I wanted to read further and let my thoughts evolve with some more context. Sometimes one buys such books and never actually reads them, but in this case I did - and luckily so.

I found the interview OK - not especially surprising or original in its structure. I very much liked the essay by Agnes Gryczkowska, "Eroticism is Assenting to Life up to the Point of Death". It discusses different concepts of the erotic, art history, and how eroticism arises not necessarily through desire but through intensity.

It is followed by an essay by Svetlana Racanović, "Balkan Erotic Epic: Demythologising the Balkans, Debalkanising the Erotic", with which I struggled a bit. Maybe it was the dense academic language (and I'm not a native English speaker), or maybe I'm too much of a stranger to the subject, or maybe I'd have to re-read it...

Then there is an excerpt from Audre Lorde's classic essay The Erotic, and an excerpt from Mithu Sanyal's book Vulva - I appreciate both works a lot. This is followed by an excerpt from Caliban and the Witch by Silvia Federici, analysing the witch trials. Finally, there is the Ecosex Manifesto by Annie Sprinkle and Elizabeth Stephens, which makes for a quirky, lighter finish (although the topic is not really light at all).

I think the conceptualisation of this small book was very well done: it served to contextualise the work shown in the exhibition and to broaden some of the topics it touches upon. It helped me understand more of Abramović's work, her recurring tropes, and the exhibition I had visited - I could connect the diffuse impact it had made on me and continue reflecting...

[Aurore]

This is a review of On The Erotic an interview of Marina Abramović by Jenny Schlenzka and Agnes Gryczkowska.

I wanted to learn more about her use of eroticism and nude in her performances. They’re quite extreme and uncomfortable but sort of undeniably powerful.

The conversation was followed by essays or excerpts of essays by Svetlana Racanović, Silvia Federici, Mithu M. Sanyal, Audre Lorde and Elizabeth M. Stephens and Annie M. Sprinkle. I really liked Agnes Gryczkowska’s essay on death and the erotic and in a kookier hippie note the ecosex manifesto by Stephens and Sprinkle.

The book offered a quick overview of the relationship between womanhood and eros in a way that was maybe too vag-centered? The essays were quite academic also so not easily approachable.

I found Racanovoć analysis of ethnos as a phallocentric performance of masculinity in Balkan countries quite compelling.