Marina Abramovic
100 letters 1965 - 1979
Paris, France: Onestar Press, 2008
197 pp., 29.7 × 21 cm., softcover
Edition of 1000
An Artist’s Book assembling of the first sentence of every letter the artist received between 1965 and 1979. These include correspondence between friends and family members with a wide variety of topics discussed, such as: food in the fridge, requests for wool, travel plans, birth announcements and artworks being framed. The text is in English and Serbian.
"Since I was very young, until my early thirties, I had serious problems in opening and reading any letters I received. Letters would stay on my table for weeks before I found the courage to open them, and during this time my sense of guilt would grow and grow.
Most of the time, when I finally opened the letters, it was too late to answer them and my sense of guilt was worse than ever.
I kept every single letter, from the first notes received from my mother, in I965, up to the time I left Belgrade for ever in I979. I decided to chronologically write down the first sentence from all of these letters, without noting the name of the senders. When finished, I was astonished to see how it was possible to trace all my life just by reading the text created by all these first lines.
Later I heard that Marcel Duchamp, on receiving a letter, opened, answered, and immediately burnt the letter he’d received.
Jean Tinguely never opened or answered any letter, and every Christmas he made a ritual of burning unopened envelopes, which sometimes included important information and even checks.”
- Marina Abramovic
