Photo: Francesco Pierantoni via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)
In 1974, legendary performance artist Marina Abramović performed Rhythm 0, a daring 6-hour work inviting her audience to do anything to her unmoving body. Through her work, Abramović attempted to explore human nature when given complete freedom and themes of sexual violation.
Before the performance, Abramović laid out 72 items on a table, ranging from harmless objects like a pen, perfume, a feather, and a rose to increasingly dangerous ones like a scalpel, a saw, a metal bar, a gun, and a bullet. She motionlessly stood there with the instructions: “There are 72 objects on the table that one can use on me as desired. Performance. I am the object… During this period I take full responsibility.”
According to Abramović, the evening started calmly, with nothing eventful occurring at the beginning. Her spectators would adjust her body and play with her, giving her kisses and a rose. Towards the third hour, the audience turned wild: someone used the sharp knives provided to cut the clothes off her body, and her neck was cut open so her blood could be sucked from it. A knife was later stuck between her legs, and rose thorns were pushed into her stomach. While crying, Abramović remained unmobile.
Groups formed in the audience, representing different sides of humanity: kindness and cruelty. Some tried to protect the artist and wiped her tears away.
The height of the performance came when the gun was loaded and put to her head, with someone guiding her finger to the trigger. People in the audience wanted to test her limits, pushing to see how far she would go for her art.
When the sixth hour had elapsed, Abramović explains that she began moving and returning to herself, no longer in the puppet-like form she had maintained. In response, everyone ran away, unable to face her as a human after seeing her as an object to be used.
Through her performance, in which she tested her mental and physical limits, Abramović intended to answer the question: “What is the public about, and what are they going to do in this kind of situation?” Abramović later reflected on the experience, realizing that the audience is capable of killing the artist if given the opportunity.
Rhythm 0 is one endurance performance out of many that Abramović has done throughout her career, including four other works in her Rhythm series: Rhythm 10, Rhythm 5, Rhythm 2, and Rhythm 4. In each performance, she explores the limits of her body through extreme pain or physical exhaustion.
Abramović is not only a pioneer in performance and endurance art, but also an explorer of human psychology and the boundaries of the human body and mind. At age 77, she continues to influence the art world with her work through her foundation, the Marina Abramović Institute.
Watch Abramovic's full reflections on the groundbreaking performance in an interview published by the Marina Abramović Institute.
In 1974, Marina Abramović performed Rhythm 0, a daring 6-hour work that invited her audience to do anything to her unmoving body.
Photo: Leo Reynolds via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
The items she provided ranged from food and flowers to a loaded gun and knives.
Photo: Marc Wathieu via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)
The performance escalated to extreme levels of danger and violence, revealing the cruelty of human nature when given the opportunity.
Photo: Francesco Pierantoni via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)
Abramović's endurance performances and her ongoing work through the Marina Abramović Institute continue to influence the art world by pushing the limits of performance art.
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