“..I will stand for 6 hours. You can do whatever you want to me with these objects. I take responsibility for what will happen.”
The sentence above was a note written on Marina Abramović's body during her Rhythm 0 performance.
Marina Abramović is a Serbian conceptual and performance artist, philanthropist, writer, and filmmaker. Her work explores body art, endurance art, and feminist art; the relationship between the performer and audience, the limits of the body, and the possibilities of the mind.
Rhythm 0 was a six-hour work of performance art by Abramović in Naples in 1974. The work involved her standing still while the audience was invited to do to her whatever they wished, using one of 72 objects she had placed on a table. This table contained all sorts of random items, from flowers to chocolate cakes, from chains to knives. There was even a bullet and a gun on the table. So visitors had a choice between good and bad. All visitors would be able to use these objects as they wished. Her purpose was essentially to impose itself as a living work of art. However, in the beginning, there was not any clue about this performance's transformation on a horrible inhumane experience for her and for the others.
Objects to be used by the audience during the performance
At first, the audience was very kind and well-intentioned. Some were giving the roses on the table to the artist, some were feeding her with cake, some were stroking her hair and shaking hands with her. But, as time passed and performance increased, all this started to change. First, one of the audience slapped her lightly. Abramovic didn't react at all. Noticing that unresponsiveness, some of the audience began to hit her harder. Audience who just shook her hand and offered her a rose started to show a tendency to violence when they realized that there was someone really vulnerable in front of them. However, repulsiveness did not end at that point. Someone in the crowd took the gun and held it to her forehead. Then placed the gun in such a way that the woman could hand it over to her neck.
They began to write on the forehead and neck of the woman with pens. As can be directly understood from all this brutality and savagery, sexual harassment happened. Some audience were squeezing her hips and breasts, some were kissing her, some were licking her and spitting... In the end, the crowd smashed the woman's clothes with scissors and left her naked. Yet, they were not satisfied with their cruelty and benighted. One of the audience scratched her belly with a knife and the others, were encouraged by this. After ripping her clothes off, they started scratching her all over with knives and vaguely stabbing her. Some were even sucking her blood after making her bleed by scratching her neck. They carried her left and right like a plastic mannequin. A man from the crowd tried to rape her...
The audience, who had not lost their humanity, tried to intervene and protect the completely unresponsive artist. They took Abramovich to a safe area, prevented her from being touched, and the performence was finally finished. At the end of 6 hours, when the artist began to move again, the crowd fled in a visibly frightened way. The fact that the person they had just tortured without hesitation, had regained the form of an individual and it shocked the crowd.
Even though Rhythm 0 is in the category of performance art, it would be more appropriate to consider it as a social experiment. In terms of art, this performance may be the best direct and lived example of how far the cruelty level of people can go against those they see as vulnerable and powerless. I am very sure that if there was a clue or a fact that gives the sense of the audience she has power, they could not even attain it. This performance held up a wonderful mirror to what happens every day in the real world. I am also very sure that the psychological version of this same physical violence happens to many people by those who "seem to be stronger than the person in front of them". Again, as we understand everywhere and in every field in life, people have chosen ugly instead of beautiful, harmful instead of beneficial, lowering instead of increasing. However, even in a less amount of number, there are good and beautiful people who exist. So it is %100000000 sure that the world needs much more good, kind and well-intentioned people. So this performance and humanity is generally left two question marks in my head. First is, what do you want from people? and the second is, why is it so hard to be nice and kind very basically?
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