Sydney--- for putting her body on the line -- from cutting herself, to walking thousands of kilometres along China's Great Wall, to having a loaded gun pointed at her head.
The charismatic Belgrade-born art pioneer counts celebrities such as pop star Lady Gaga among her fans, while her performances attract people in the thousands.
But for all her current fame, Abramovic credits the months spent in quiet remote Australian Aboriginal communities in the 1980s as being one of the major influences on her life's work.
"This really changes our lives, connection with this kind of people," Abramovic explains to AFP of the time she spent with her then partner, German artist Frank Uwe Laysiepen, known as Ulay, in the central Australian desert regions.
They lived for close to a year in Australia, mostly with the Pintupi and Pitjantjatjara tribes near the giant red monolith Uluru and in big Outback cattle stations.
The Aboriginal "idea of here and now; that everything is happening in the present time" struck a chord with Abramovic, who reached for the same experience in her art.
It ultimately helped her develop the thinking behind her 2010 blockbuster New York performance called "The Artist is Present", in which she sat silent and immobile for seven hours a day, six days a week for three months.
"(When) Aborigines are explaining to us the meaning (of myths), they would always say it's happening now, it's not happening in the past, it's not happening in the future... it's happening now and is always happening now," she explains, retaining a distinctive accent despite being based abroad for years.
"So they knew, that actually in life, the only thing we can rely on is the present because the past already happened, and the future didn't. And you don't know what's the future. Next second we can all be dead."
- Every human being can kill -
Abramovic tempted death during her 1974 performance "Rhythm Zero" in Naples in which gallery visitors were invited to treat her as an object, similar to those she had laid out before them, including a feather, rose, bullet and pistol.
The six-hour experience began tamely, but by the end Abramovic was bloodied and near naked, with the audience having taken off her clothes, put a loaded gun to her head, cut her neck and written on her body.
"What I learn is this, that every single human being can kill another human being," Abramovic says from Sydney where she has created a series of spaces to engage visitors as part of the Kaldor Public Art Project.
Abramovic says she has experienced both the best and worst of humankind in her work, with a highlight being "The Artist Is Present" five years ago.
AFP
