My favourite author or book
Fyodor Dostoevsky. I started reading him when I was 15 and continued for all of my youth. The way he tells a story and the complexity of his characters in my eyes makes him one of the great writers. I lived in Belgrade at the time and remember reading The Idiot. I never left home until I finished the book. I would go to my kitchen, grab some food, and continue reading. The reality of the book became my own reality and it was my way of escaping my gloomy life in a communist country.
The book I’m reading
Five Modern Noh Plays by Yukio Mishima. Mishima is such an enigmatic figure. Just the fact that he committed suicide by traditional hara-kiri is mind-blowing. I basically have read everything he ever wrote. Just recently, my partner bought me a little copy of this book from a second-hand bookshop. There are five plays which have never been put on stage. They are extraordinary, very conceptual and I am playing with the idea that I can one day direct one of them myself.
The book I wish I had written
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce. The way this book was written and the struggles the young man experiences with his family and society, before finally leaving home, could be my own story. Different names, different backgrounds, different religions, but still so similar to my own story.
The book I couldn’t finish
Fire in the Belly: The Life and Times of David Wojnarowicz by Cynthia Carr. A great book, written by an excellent writer, talking about a devastating time in gay culture through the Aids epidemic. An enormous number of artists, thinkers, writers and intellectuals died. It was painful and I knew some of these people. I started reading it many times, and one day I will finish it.
The book I’m ashamed I haven’t read
A Certain Lack of Coherence: Writings on Art and Cultural Politics by Jimmie Durham. I love Durham as an artist and thinker. His work explores the deep connections to spiritual and political questions of Native Americans. At some point I met him in the northern part of Japan. We were doing a project together and I was very unhappy because of lack of organisation and some technical problems. He looked at me and said, “Nobody has the right to put your spirit down.” After he died, I bought this book and it has remained on my desk, ready to read.
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My favourite film
The Color of Pomegranates by Sergei Parajanov [a 1969 Soviet-Armenian film]. I discovered Parajanov in 1978 when I went to the Anthology Film Archives with Jonas Mekas, where he dedicated an entire week to Parajanov’s movies. This was the first time I saw The Color of Pomegranates. I was so taken by this movie that I went to every screening again, again and again. I felt as if I had met my spiritual father.
My favourite play
Vollmond by Pina Bausch. I recently saw this with a new cast in Wuppertal. The name translates to full moon and the play was originally made in 1978. I was so shocked at how fresh and relevant it still is today. Her work never ages and in my opinion is the closest to the physical limits of performance art.
My favourite TV series
Green Acres. I was living in Amsterdam when I first saw this in the 1980s. I love Eva Gabor, coming from the big city in her sexy negligee to the rural country and her husband driving the tractor in a tuxedo. In the morning she said to her husband that the chicken was in the oven and she went to the peasant women to give make-up lessons. Her husband came back hungry and exhausted, he opened the oven, and a chicken walked out. It’s funny, silly and wonderful at the same time.
My favourite piece of music
Goldberg Variations by Johann Sebastian Bach. Profound, emotional, moving.
The last movie that made me cry
Doctor Zhivago by David Lean. Omar Sharif on the big screen with big sad eyes, thick eyebrows, snow in the background, there is nothing more to say. You cry, cry and cry.
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The song that saved me
Casta Diva from Norma, specifically Maria Callas’s interpretation. It is timeless music and I know I can always listen to it in the hardest moments in my life.
The instrument I played
I never played any instruments. My mother once paid a teacher to teach me piano and after one year of total torture for me, he came and said to my mother, “Comrade Abramovic does not have and will never have an ear for music.” I was liberated and it was one the happiest moments of my life.
The instrument I wish I’d learnt
The saxophone.
The music that cheers me up
Anything by the Andrews Sisters, especially Rum and Coca-Cola.
If I could own one painting it would be . . .
The Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh. The energy and electricity radiating from this painting is incredible. I could look at this painting for hours.
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The place I feel happiest
West of Lake Disappointment [now known as Kumpupintil Lake] in the Western Australian desert. I spent one year with my partner Ulay there, living with two aboriginal tribes. It was an experience that profoundly changed me and one I will never forget.
My guiltiest cultural pleasure
Bad Christmas movies with a happy ending.
I’m having a fantasy dinner party, I’ll invite these artists and authors . . .
Mahatma Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, Franz Kafka, Vincent Van Gogh, Yukio Mishima, James Joyce, Maria Callas, Frida Kahlo, Susan Sontag.
. . . and I’ll put on this music . . .
Sad Russian songs.
The movie that I’m looking forward to
The Whale by Darren Aronofsky. I just saw this film and it was absolutely incredible. A huge metaphor for life itself and the ending made me cry uncontrollably.
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I wasted an evening listening to . . .
Donald Trump’s speeches.
The film I walked out on
Planet of the Apes.
The Last Days of the Opera features essays by Marina Abramovic, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Tilda Swinton, William Kentridge and others, is published by Skira, £35. Abramovic is at the Royal Academy from Sep 23, royalacademy.org.uk
