The performance artist who sparked controversy by permitting spectators to do anything they wished to her body for six hours has revealed the moment when the stunt took a dramatic turn for the worse.
In 1974, Serbian conceptual artist Marina Abramoviฤ embarked on the most dangerous performance of her career, titled ‘Rhythm 0.’ For six hours, she stood motionless while allowing visitors to use a range of objects on her in any manner they chose.
To test the limits of human behavior when granted absolute control over another person’s body, Abramoviฤ provided 72 different objects for spectators to use as they wished.
Unsurprisingly, it didn’t take long for the experiment to go south, but where did it all go wrong?
At first, the stunt was quite mild, with visitors either presenting her a rose or simply observing her as she stood still.
However, things would soon take a much darker turn.
“At the beginning, nothing really happened,” Abramoviฤ, now 77, later remarked in an interview on the Marina Abramoviฤ Institute YouTube channel.
“The public was really kind. They gave me roses, kissed me, and watched me closely. But as time went on, their behavior became increasingly wild.”
Emboldened by the knowledge that Abramoviฤ had surrendered her fate completely to them, spectators grew increasingly violent. They slashed her clothes with razor blades, and one individual even cut her throat to drink her blood.
The artist later revealed that she believed the turning point came when the audience realized they could do whatever they wanted with her body without consequence.
By the end of the performance, the audience had divided into two groups: those who wanted to protect Abramoviฤ and those who wished to harm her. A fight erupted in the room after a loaded gun was pointed at her head. It remains unclear whether this incident ended the experiment or if it simply marked the end of the six-hour duration.
Regardless, Abramoviฤ exposed some harrowing truths about what people are willing to do to others when there are no consequences.
“What I learned was that … if you leave it up to the audience, they can kill you,” she said.
“I felt truly violated: they cut up my clothes, stuck rose thorns in my stomach, one person aimed a gun at my head, and another took it away.”
Abramoviฤ also noted that several spectators fled after the performance ended, unable to face the woman they had treated so horribly.
“Everybody ran away. People couldn’t actually confront me as a person.”
The performance not only solidified Abramoviฤโs status as one of the most important conceptual artists of the time but also highlighted the cruel tendencies of the human mind.
