In 141 this week we talked about performer Amanda Palmer’s Ted Talk—The Art of Asking. Aiblin commented on the trust required to allow an audience to interact with her naked body. This immediately reminded me of MARINA ABRAMOVIĆ‘s 1974 endurance art performance piece Rhythm 0.

“I was ready to die.”

Marina Abramović, performance artist

Rhythm 0 (1974) was a six-hour work of performance art by Serbian artist Marina Abramović in Studio Morra, Naples.[1] The work involved Abramović standing still while the audience was invited to do to her whatever they wished, using one of 72 objects she had placed on a table. These included a rose, feather, perfume, honey, bread, grapes, wine, scissors, a scalpel, nails, a metal bar, and a gun loaded with one bullet.[2][3]

There were no separate stages. Abramović and the visitors stood in the same space, making it clear that the latter were part of the work.[4] The purpose of the piece, she said, was to find out how far the public would go: “What is the public about and what are they going to do in this kind of situation?”[5]

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