The function of the artist in a disturbed society is to give awareness of the universe, to ask the right questions, and to elevate the mind.
We are used to cleaning the outside house, but the most important house to clean is yourself – your own house – which we never do.
From the very early stage when I started doing performance art in the ’70s, the general attitude – not just me, but also my colleagues – was that there should not be any documentation, that the performance itself is artwork and there should be no documentation.
In theater, blood is ketchup; in performance, everything’s real.
To really change the way society thinks, you have to give your entire being to it until there’s nothing left.
We are actually living in a million parallel realities every single minute.
All my inspiration comes from life. That’s how it never stops, in a way.
I was friends with Susan Sontag the last four years of her life. She had this amazing charisma and so much energy, but she had a sad little funeral in Montparnasse in Paris. It was rainy. It was all wrong. And I was thinking, ‘God, she loved life so much.
I believe so much in the power of performance I don’t want to convince people. I want them to experience it and come away convinced on their own.
I am only interested in the ideas that become obsessive and make me feel uneasy. The ideas that I’m afraid of.
