The Story of Marina Abramović & Ulay (interview)

Legendary couple in performance art – Marina Abramović and Ulay – lived together for 12 years and made pioneering work as a duo. In this extraordinary double interview the artists looks back on their relationship – from their first meeting in 1975 until today. Abramović and Ulay met for the first time in Amsterdam in 1975 on their shared birthday. Abramović was fascinated by Ulay’s looks – dressed as half man, half woman – and recalls the German photographer as a “self-made man,” interested in transgender and living a very free life. In turn, Ulay remembers the young Serbian performance artist “as very much fatal,” having an “enormous Balkanesque temperament and stamina.” He tended to her wounds after she had cut a five-point star onto her stomach for the work ‘Lips of Thomas’ (1975), and the two artists fell in love and soon after decided to live and work together. In their first spectacular performance, ‘Relation in Space’, the two nude artists passed each other with increasing