'Free your mind' video

'Free your mind' Video 9:45 min 2004

One of the first projects that I completed is a video entitled Free your mind. The video of Marina Abramović was my starting point and it gave me the idea for my work.  However, I was not very happy with the first form of the idea and, therefore, I continually tried to find a way to differentiate my work from that of Marina. What should an artist do to respect the source of his inspiration, the work of a famous colleague who has made a name for herself, and at the same time, to distance himself from that work and that name, and to become himself?   For a moment, I thought about how I could free myself, not from the influence, but from the torture of trying to find myself in the work of another artist, if I repeated out loud the famous name, until it lost its meaning.   Then, I realised that this is a way to be freed from every name and influence.  I started to spontaneously call the names of the artists that came to my mind and who have influenced me in one way or another.  I felt that I was doing some kind of exorcism.  In a way, I was respecting those names, but at the same time, I was freeing myself from a weight, from all that I had accumulated on my mind in the form of preferences and influences, by taking them off of me and converting them into empty sounds, which one after another, were lost in time and space...  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNVO2tXqnNk