Theodore H.'s Key Ideas from Walk Through Walls
by Marina Abramovic

“Because in the end you are really alone, whatever you do.”

“What you’re doing is not important. What is really important is the state of mind from which you do it. Performance”

“It is incredible how fear is built into you, by your parents and others surrounding you. You’re so innocent in the beginning; you don’t know.”

“If you’re a woman, it’s almost impossible to establish a relationship. You’re too much for everybody. It’s too much. The woman always has to play this role of being fragile and dependent. And if you’re not, they’are fascinated by you, but only for a little while. And then they want to change you and crush you. And then they leave. So, lots of lonely hotel rooms, my dear.”

“If you experiment, you have to fail. By definition, experimenting means going to territory where you’ve never been, where failure is very possible. How can you know you’re going to succeed? Having the courage to face the unknown is so important.

“To control the breathing is to control the mind. With different patterns of breathing, you can fall in love, you can hate someone, you can feel the whole spectrum of feelings by changing your breathing.”

“People have so much pain inside them that they’re not even aware of.”

“When I was young it was impossible for me to talk to people. Now I can stand in front of three thousand people without any notes, any preconception of what I’m going to say, even without visual material, and I can look at everyone in the audience and talk for two hours easily. What happened? Art happened.”

“Some couples buy pots and pans when they move in together. Ulay and I began planning how to make art together.”

“The hardest thing to do is something that is close to nothing.”

“Human beings are afraid of very simple things: we fear suffering, we fear mortality. What I was doing in Rhythm 0—as in all my other performances—was staging these fears for the audience: using their energy to push my body as far as possible. In the process, I liberated myself from my fears. And as this happened, I became a mirror for the audience—if I could do it, they could do it, too.”

“Sometimes people are ashamed to talk about these things, but I know so many people who would never throw away their old shitty T-shirts or pullovers that are falling apart because of the comfort they get from those clothes. Everybody is vulnerable.”

“Then I woke up and the reality of the dream was stronger than the reality of the day.”

“... you can tell the most terrible truths if you first open the human heart with humor.”

“I realized that this is the theme I return to constantly - I'm always trying to prove to everyone that I can go it alone, that I can survive, that I don't need anybody.”

“Travelling makes a person young because he doesn't get time to get old.”