Psychoanalyst meets Marina Abramovi

In the summer of 2015, the world-renowned performance artist Marina Abramovic and the psychoanalyst Jeannette Fischer, who have been friends for years, spent four days together at the artist's house in the Hudson Valley. In free associative conversations, they subjected Abramovic's biography and artistic work—and their interrelationship—to an in-depth examination from a psychoanalytic perspective. Abramovic hoped to gain deeper insights into her own self, her personality, and her work through this exchange. There are many artist talks, she says, but the opportunity to contextually link a artist's life and work through psychoanalysis is rare. The book that emerged from these conversations is neither a psychological report nor Fischer's own analysis of the artist. Rather, it offers an insight into the structures and dynamics at play.