In 1974, artist Marina Abramović performed “Rhythm 0,” an artwork in which she sat motionless with 72 objects on a table that the audience could use on her as they chose. She was bruised, cut, stung by thorns, and eventually an audience member tried to shoot her
“It began tamely. Someone turned her around. Someone thrust her arms into the air. Someone touched her somewhat intimately.
The Neapolitan night began to heat up. In the third hour all her clothes were cut from her with razor sharp blades.
In the fourth hour the same blades began to explore her skin. Her throat was slashed so someone could suck her blood.
Various minor sexual assaults were carried out on her body. She was so committed to the piece that she would not have resisted rape or murder.
Faced with her abdication of will, with its implied collapse of human psychology, a protective group began to define itself in the audience.
When a loaded gun was thrust to Marina’s head and her own finger was being worked around the trigger, a fight broke out between the audience factions.”
wtf 😳😳😳
You want to see who the person really is, Give them power over somebody.
There was a House episode about similar story.
Humans are creepy
All of the comments leave out the best part. After 6 hours, she stood up and walked toward everyone. They ran away. It’s one of the best performance art pieces out there.
I knew humans could be shitty, but am also interested in the psychology of this artist. Who wants to experience this?
Good to know ppl in 1974 were just as fucked up as they are in 2025.
I was worried for a minute we were getting worse.
What a relief
This was and still is such an interesting and disturbing view into humans. How things start small and escalate to insanity. Nobody showed up with the intent to torture yet they did exactly that.
If I remember correctly, at the end of this piece, she said (and I’m just paraphrasing) it goes to show that Humans are more than willing to commit violence/kill if it was deemed acceptable to do so.
This is what first came to my mind when I saw that streamer post standing in one place for 38 hours
a youtuber did this on a public street, it didn’t go well
She was on House. It wasn’t lupus.
How could someone watch as those things happened and only intervene after she was about to die fucking ridiculous
I dated a women who was into performance art as a dancer. She filled cups with paint and set them out and without much direction encouraged spectators to douse her in the paint as she danced. She expected like little bits of paint poured on her as she danced but what she got were people trying their best to cover her completely with as much paint as they could which just made it too slippery to dance and she freaked out halfway through when she was falling in the paint and got upset at all of the paint throwers. I had to try to talk sense into her later that she didn’t make her expectations clear and couldn’t blame the people for what ended up happening
People are fucking strange
Yoko Ono experienced something similar in Cut Piece. The more things change…
Am I the only one who would have tried to stack everything on her head?
It can’t just be me.
My turn to post this next week
Was a loaded gun actually one of the 72 objects available to the audience?
No matter how you feel about this woman, it does not negate the truth of how disgusting people are to others when they think they can get away with it.
The woman who raped Shia LaBeouf during his art performance is another example.
This shows just how ugly humanity can be.
She was also involved in spirit cooking…. strange stuff
This is why not to be a polite pushover. If you let people do what they want with you, this is what they do. Sums up my life story
Well, it seems that she understood Reddit and Twitter way before they even existed…
It works as an allegory of those with power and without. When humans feel free of consequences, they seem to find their way to violence and perversion. This is why billionaires and other societal elites are detrimental to civilization.
Our moral code should not be changed based on what we are given permission to do. If the law says “there is no consequence for sexual assault” *YOU STILL DONT SEXUALLY ASSAULT PEOPLE BECAUSE ITS WRONG* and if the law says “you can steal from people” *YOU DONT STEAL FOR THE SAME REASON*!
If our laws fail us morally it’s our duty to make up for those failings. It’s sad that of all the various ways humans can interact with one another people chose to inflict violence. It speaks volumes about how little respect is truly given and how far people are willing to go if they can get away with it. It’s a brutal version of the dial pain experiment.
so in the title it says audience member tried to shoot her.
was the gun/ammo part of the 72 objects that wa on the table?
if so, this artist is as crazy and insane as the audience that gave her pain
She later did a performance piece where she sat at a table, people could sit across from her and she would just sit and look at them for a few minutes. Eventually her former partner and lover was one of the people in front of her and it was a [beautiful moment.](https://youtu.be/Sf8o1teJdXo?si=eiDfI-mp8umazQpE)
This is so infuriating to me, to see someone as helpless and to take advantage of it really drives me up a fucking wall. You have to be scum to see someone motionless and start groping and stinging her.
What in th actual fuck is wrong with people..?
Classic humanity, alright… when given the power to do anything to someone else, some may be tame for their moral compass can make them do things that are good. Or for bad. This is a perfect example. Marina gave the audience the power to do anything to her, and eventually. It escalated. It’s pathetic, really.
So accountability is a good thing, people will do heinous things when they won’t have to face the consequences.
“Humans are terrible” lbr none (or the vast minority?) of the people who hurt her were women
Why are people so weird. I’d just want to plait her hair or something. I love plaiting people’s hair if they let me
Everyone I hear about these extreme art performances and exhibits I am reminded how much regular people are monsters too. Not just the monster we see on the headlines all the time these days.
I, too, saw the comments discussing this performance under the video of that kid who kept getting messed with while standing still for 30+ hours
She’s such an interesting artist. I highly recommend listening to her read her autobiography on Audible.
People are terrible, the end.
Humans suck
Yoko Ono used to do performances like this and they always basically resulted in her being assaulted.
Yup…
Humans have absolutely always sucked…
I’m sorry all I can think about is the Documentary Now! episode.
So much art
Ah yes… Art.