Episode Details

In a Naples gallery in 1974, Marina Abramović stood still for six hours beside 72 objects, from a feather and a rose to a scalpel and a gun with a single bullet, and let the audience do whatever they wanted. This episode traces how she got there: a Belgrade childhood split between a devoutly Orthodox grandmother and communist partisan parents, a mother who beat her and imposed a 10 p.m. curfew until she was 29, and the Rhythm series in which she stabbed a knife between her fingers, lay inside a burning pentagram, and passed out from lack of oxygen.

We follow her decade with Ulay as a two-headed body, from breathing each other's exhaled air to Rest Energy, where a drawn bow pointed an arrow at her heart, and their 1988 breakup walking the Great Wall of China from opposite ends. The conversation covers Balkan Baroque, scrubbing bloody cow bones in Venice, the 736 hours of The Artist Is Present at MoMA in 2010, the later friction with Ulay and Jay-Z, and how Spirit Cooking was ripped from its gallery context into political conspiracy theories.

• How adrenaline and ritual repetition let her override pain responses on stage
• Why passing out taught her that art requires conscious presence
• How the Rhythm 0 crowd turned vicious and then fled when she became human again
• Why sustained silent eye contact overwhelmed visitors at The Artist Is Present
• Her 2025 Balkan Erotic Epic in Manchester and a planned 2026 solo show at Venice's Gallerie dell'Accademia