Marina Abramovic’s Performances
Marina Abramovic is a Serbian artist known as the godmother of performance art. Their experiences seek to explore the relationship between artist and audience, as well as the physical and mental limitations of human beings.
At the beginning of her career, Marina Abramovic considered that painting was not enough to express her feelings and chose to transform her body into a means of expressing everything she felt and experienced.
Abramovic’s most important artistic productions were ‘Os Rhythms’, made between 1973 and 1974. According to the artist, the words that characterized the performances were sound and time, consciousness and unconsciousness.
Rhythm 0 was the last experience in this series. This was the most important and experimental of all. She sought to test social boundaries and free will. Both the artist and the spectators never imagined the results of this experiment.
What did Marina Abramovic’s experience consist of?
Abramovic’s experimental performance consisted of remaining completely still for 6 hours. From 8 pm until 2 am. The show could not be interrupted in any way.
Beside him was a table full of objects, 72 in all. Among them were a wide variety of tools to provide pleasure or pain. For example, among the objects of pleasure there were flowers, a rose, a soap, a feather, a hairpin and a scarf, among others. Among the objects of pain were a hammer, scissors, a knife, a whip, and a revolver.
The only order for the spectators was for them to use the objects as they pleased. Marina Abramovic took full responsibility for everything that could happen to her in performing the performance.
The main purpose of this type of performance was to answer the question: What would the audience do in a situation with complete freedom to do what they wanted?
What were the results of Marina Abramovic’s performance?
The experience that Marina Abramovic lived was calm in the beginning, but very intense in the end. For the first three hours there was no problem. Instead, all viewers were very respectful and friendly. One of them even kissed her and another handed her one of the roses on the table.
In the last three hours, everything has changed progressively. Viewers became unpredictable and even violent. A man cut his neck. Another wrote end on his forehead with lipstick. They also cut the clothes she wore with scissors, among other types of humiliation.
However, the limit came when one of the spectators loaded the gun and pointed it at Marina. At that time, the public split into two groups: those who defended and those who wanted to continue the abuses. This caused the museum guards to throw the gun out the window, intervening in the development of the performance.
At the end of the six-hour show, Marina Abramovic started to move and tried to get closer to her audience, but everyone left the room for fear of reprisals from the artist. Marina went from being a passive subject to an active subject, capable of responding to the humiliations suffered.
Final reflections on Marina Abramovic’s performance
Somehow, experience has revealed the hidden face of the human psyche when there are no social limits. What happened leads us to reflect on freedom, responsibility, authority and respect. How far do we get carried away by our personal desires and interests? What are we able to do when we feel empowered and without limitations?
Marina Abramovic’s experiment showed how easy it is for some people to show a violent attitude towards someone who cannot defend themselves and is unprotected. The artist was humiliated and dehumanized by her viewers.
From the beginning of the performance, she knew that she was taking great risks. She even confessed that she was willing to die during the experience. At the end of the presentation, she stated that the results were unexpected and that leaving control in the hands of the audience could lead to experiences as dangerous as the possibility of dying.
