Balkan Erotic Epic

" I just wanted to do something different. I went to the former Yugoslavia—I was interested in the roots of the culture, which has a lot of pagan elements, and the idea of the “erotic.” How we see “erotic” today is so limited; we think erotic equals pornography. The woman with her breasts exposed is a kind of erotic that’s very vulgar, very predictable, and we are fed by these very standard images. In Balkan culture, the sexual organs, male and female, were used as tools for taking evil away, connecting with the forces of nature. I found all these different rituals, going back to the sixteenth century, and staged them in a film. For instance: In the villages there would be lots of rain, which would damage the growing corn—so all the women of the village, from the very young to the very old, would run into the fields and lift their skirts to scare the gods and make the rain stop. It’s an amazing image. There’s nothing pornographic there, and it makes you see your own organs in a completely different light." - Marina Abramović