Marina Abramović is a Serbian conceptual and performance artist who made quite a name for herself by going above and beyond to test the limits of the mind and body. She has endured physical pain and exhaustion through her career as an artist.
Abramović is widely known for her performance series titled Rhythms, composed of 5 performance artworks: Rhythm 10, Rhythm 5, Rhythm 2, Rhythm 4, and Rhythm 0. I will be focusing on Rhythm 0, the last of her Rhythms series, taking place in 1974 in Naples, Italy. For the performance, Abramović gathered and laid out 72 objects on a table ranging from lipstick to a loaded gun, the variety “for pleasure and for pain.” She stood in the middle of her space and declared to her audience “I am the object. During this period I take full responsibility,” (The Harvard Crimson) and invited them to do whatever they wanted to her. But what actually happened when the audience participated?
“In the beginning, the public was really very much playing with me,”(MoMA) Abramović stated. In the beginning, the audience was gentle and playful with her, taking advantage of some of the pleasure items, such as flowers and perfume. Over time, the audience became more tempted by the pain items and emboldened by the lack of consequences they would face. The objects had different potentials for violence or pleasure, it was in the power of the audience to act on that potential.
Halfway through the 6 hour performance, the audience had cut off her clothes. They cut her hair and her skin, some members drinking her blood, and others touched her inappropriately. At some point, an audience member loaded the gun on the table and put it in her hand. The performance eventually ceased due to the audience’s aggression, they had pushed as far as was allowed in the absence of accountability for their actions.
This performance blurred the lines between art and crime because the artist herself gave consent to be subject to whatever the audience chose to put her through. Does the knowledge of action as a performance change its ethical or legal status? Abramović willed the audience to participate and had carefully selected all of the materials herself, knowing that their true threat was in the hands of the public, who revealed a greatly disturbing impulse of violence. Does artist consent make otherwise criminal acts permissible? In my opinion, I don’t wish to limit our artists or their social experiments, but I don’t see how such violent acts can ethically be excused. So when does participation in performance art become a criminal act?
I don’t feel that consent necessarily excuses criminality, but I acknowledge that this specific situation is complicated given that Abramović intentionally orchestrated the conditions of her performance and verbally accepted responsibility for everything that occurred during.
Bibliography
“Marina Abramović.” Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., https://www.britannica.com/
“Marina Abramović: Rhythm 0.” Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Guggenheim Museums and Foundation, https://www.guggenheim.org/
“Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present: Rhythm 0, 1974.” The Museum of Modern Art, https://www.moma.org/audio/
Anthony, Ella A. “The Violent Viewer: Rhythm 0 and Subjecting Oneself to Dehumanization.” The Harvard Crimson, 30 Mar. 2023, https://www.thecrimson.com/
A point of clarification: The article states “The performance eventually ceased due to the audience’s aggression…” In fact, the performance ended because its 6-hour duration had elapsed.