Rhythm 0
Rhythm 0 (1974) is a six-hour work by the Yugoslav performance artist Marina Abramović in Studio Morra, Naples . The performance consisted of Abramović standing still or otherwise being passive while the audience was invited to perform all sorts of actions with 72 objects placed on a table. Items included a rose, feather, perfume, honey, bread, grapes, wine, scissors, a scalpel , nails, a metal rod, and a loaded revolver .
There was no stage and no separation between the artist and the audience. According to her, the purpose was to find out how far the audience would go in this situation. The instructions to the address of the audience were laid out on the table.
Instructions.
There are 72 objects on the table that can be used on me as desired.
Performance.
I am the object.
During this period, I take full responsibility.
Duration: 6 hours (8 p.m. to 2 a.m.).
Rhythm 0 made use of structures similar to those of Yoko Ono's performance Cut Piece ten years earlier .
course
The progress was reported in the book "No Innocent Bystanders" (Frazer Ward, 2012) as follows:
It started harmlessly. Somebody turned her arms around. Someone put her arms up in the air. Someone was touching her in a reasonably intimate way. The Neapolitan night began to heat up. In the third lesson, all of her clothes were cut off with razor blades. In the fourth hour, razor blades probed her skin. Someone cut her throat with the same razor blades to lick the blood. Various minor sexual assaults have been carried out on her body. She was so committed to her performance that she would not have resisted rape or murder. Given their lack of will, with their implied collapse of the human psyche, a protective group formed in the audience. When a loaded firearm was brought to her head and her finger was placed on the trigger, a fight broke out between the audience groups.
Abramović described the events as follows:
What I learned from it was ... that if you leave it all to the audience, it can kill you.
I felt violated: they cut open my clothes, stuck rose thorns in my stomach, one person aimed the revolver at my head, and someone else took it away. An aggressive atmosphere developed. After exactly six hours, as planned, I got up and walked towards the audience. Everyone ran away to avoid an actual confrontation.
Web links
- Rhythm 0 on the Guggenheim Museum website
swell
- ↑ Lara Shalson: Performing Endurance. Art and Politics since 1960 , Cambridge University Press 2018, ISBN 978-1108426459 , p. 68
- ^ Frazer Ward (2012): "No Innocent Bystanders: Performance Art and Audience." Dartmouth. ISBN 978-1-61168-335-6
- ↑ a b Marina Abramović, Anna Daneri, Giacinto Di Pietrantonio and others (2002): Body Art. Charter / Fondazione Antonio Ratti, Milan