STEREOSKOP
MARINA ABRAMOVIĆ’S DECISIONS
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MAY 3rd, 2025
Marina Abramović’s philosophy of decision-making is centered on endurance, vulnerability, discipline, and intuitive awareness. Her work explores how conscious choice, repetition, and interaction with the audience can foster self-transformation. This article analyzes Abramović’s methods and perspectives on decision-making as presented in her performances, autobiography, institutional framework, and documented interviews.
Marina Abramović’s work offers more than visual or conceptual experience; it represents a test of will, both for herself and her audiences. Her approach to decision-making is fundamentally experiential and psychological—based on tension between control and surrender. This paper explores how she engages in decision-making, not only artistically, but also as a life philosophy embedded in discipline, intuitive awareness, and radical presence.
Raised in a strict military household in Belgrade (Serbia), Abramović developed a disciplined ethos that still underpins her artistic process. She would remark:
“I learned iron discipline; this is why I'm always on time... The willpower—if I have something to do, I will do whatever it takes.” (Frost, 2024)
It seems discipline grounds her preparation, while intuition guides her real-time decisions in performance. In her memoir Walk Through Walls, Abramović reflects on her capacity to follow “invisible signals,” particularly during long durational pieces where rational planning yields to embodied experience (Abramović, 2016, pp. 212–215).
The Abramović Method, formalized in her institute (MAI), is a set of exercises designed to help participants slow down. Observe themselves. And make intentional, conscious decisions through stillness and repetition:
For instance, in the 2024 Shanghai exhibition Transforming Energy, participants opened and closed heavy iron doors slowly over long periods. Abramović described this as “a doorway to a change of consciousness,” where physical action becomes a transformative choice (Frost, 2024).
This method would teach participants to delay reflex and foster awareness—an echo of her belief that decision-making can become a spiritual and energetic practice.
In works like Rhythm 0 (1974), Abramović allowed the audience to make decisions for her body, presenting 72 objects—including scissors, lipstick, and a loaded gun. Over six hours, participants escalated their actions from gentle touches to violent gestures, testing the limits of ethical responsibility and choice (Hollis, 2018). The performance revealed the often unconscious forces guiding collective decision-making when power is given without consequence.
Similarly, in The Artist Is Present (2010), Abramović’s silent eye contact with visitors created a mutual space where nonverbal decisions—whether to engage, cry, sit longer—became deeply meaningful acts (Matthew Akers, 2012).
Marina Abramović’s decision-making philosophy fuses discipline, intuition, and transformation through presence. Whether through the structuring of long durational work or the radical opening to the agency of an audience. Her art exposes the inner mechanisms of choice, habit, and uncertainty. She doesn’t merely perform decisions—she transforms them into tools for inner awareness and performed progress.
(1) Abramović, M. (2016). *Walk Through Walls: A Memoir*. Crown Archetype.
(1) Frost, A. (2024, October 8). Women give me babies to hold. I’m loved! Marina Abramović on art, ageing and being bigger than Trump. *The Guardian*. [https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2024/oct/08/women-give-me-babies-to-hold-im-loved-marina-abramovic-on-art-ageing-and-being-bigger-than-trump]
(2) Hollis, S. (2018, November 19). The power of silence: The art of Marina Abramović. *Cherwell*. [https://cherwell.org/2018/11/19/the-power-of-silence-the-art-of-marina-abramovic/]
(3) Marina Abramović Institute (MAI). (n.d.). *The Abramović Method*. [https://www.mai.art/the-abramovic-method]
(4) Akers, M. (Director). (2012). *Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present* \[Film]. Show of Force; HBO Documentary Films. [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2073029/]
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