Performance art. When people see it they don't know what to think. If they do it's usually an assortment of gibberish or just an utterly confused "whaaaaa". The truth is that the beauty of performance art is that it's not meant to be compartmentalized. We spend so much time and effort every day putting people and things into categories and performance art just doesn't fit. It's weird. It's exciting. It's inspiring.

But as I sit in awe of women like Marina Abramovic, I wonder, why? What drew them to this particularly? What is this magic or power behind what we know as performance art? Who better than performance artist's to tell you for themselves.

"Theatre is fake ... The knife is not real, the blood is not real, and the emotions are not real. Performance is just the opposite: the knife is real, the blood is real, and the emotions are real."

"I realize the power of art that does not hang on the walls of galleries."

"If you learn to be a psychoanalyst, and you're working as a psychoanalyst, your job is in that context. If you're a baker, making bread, you're a baker. If you make the best bread in the world, you're not an artist, but if you bake the bread in the gallery, you're an artist. So the context makes the difference. And my context is art."

"For me, the interesting thing about performance art is that it will have no tradition, in the sense that the pieces are made for the moment. They are not made to last, the way, say, a play of Shakespeare, Moliere, or Tennessee Williams is. They are events of our time, like a shooting star."