Most people may wonder that if they are in a world without restrictions or limitations, what would they do?
In 1974, artist Marina Abramović conducted an art performance titled “Rhythm 0”. She stood motionless in an art gallery for exactly 6 hours. Besides her was a table with a feather, knives, lipstick, a camera, a rose, a gun… and a bullet. The audience were allowed to do anything they wanted to Abramović’s body. At first, people were nervous, they looked at Abramović and took pictures of her. Then they became relaxed. They placed items on her and asked her to smoke. Then they became bold. They took off her clothes and drew things on her with the lipstick. Finally they became aggressive. They cut her with knife and carried her around the room. One participant even put the bullet in the gun and pointed it at Abramović’s head. However, he was stopped by another participant.
At the end of the six hours, the performance was ended. Abramović stood up, cried, with blood dripping down her body she walked towards the audience.
The audience were scared and they ran away because nobody wanted to be revenged.
Abramović didn’t revenge of course, but she said “What I learned was that … if you leave it up to the audience, they can kill you … I felt really violated…It created an aggressive atmosphere. After exactly 6 hours, as planned, I stood up and started walking toward the audience. Everyone ran away, to escape an actual confrontation.”
Yueqi Wang
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This piece from Maria Abramovic was definitely one of her most famous, because it showed how humans can really be cruel if they have the opportunity to. I feel like if there was nobody else present that had the morals to stop people who were hurting Maria, she truly could have died that day. I read somewhere that the people who were hurting Maria were mostly men and some women even told their male friends/partners to hurt her in their stead. I thought it was cowardly how people who had blatantly hurt her just a few moments ago could not face her and ran away. That person that pointed the gun at her was especially cowardly and repulsive.