A terrible experiment: the artist stood at attention for 6 hours and allowed the audience to do anything with her

The Yugoslav artist, organizer of performances Marina Abramovich is an indisputable authority in the world of contemporary art. Abramovich is called the grandmother of performance art. Her performances and installations continue to be talked about decades later. One of its most famous actions was called "Rhythm 0" and was organized in 1974 in Naples. This performance was fraught with danger even at the stage of the idea, but when it began, events developed too quickly.

At first, only photographers approached Marina Abramovich.

The idea of the "Rhythm 0" performance was very simple: Abramovich had to stand still for six hours, while the people who came to see her could do whatever they wanted with her, using any of the 72 objects that she put on the table next to her.

After some time, people began to choose items on the table.

Abramovich was standing in the middle of the room with a sign on her chest that read: "Instructions: there are 72 items on the table that can be applied to me as you want. Performance. I am an object. During this period of time, I am fully responsible. Duration: 6 hours (8 pm - 2 am)".

Some people forced her to sit down so they could humiliate her.

There were "objects for pleasure" and "objects for destruction" on the table. Among the harmless objects were flowers and feathers. Among the dangerous ones are a knife, razor blades and a loaded pistol.

The audience changed the position of the artist's body.

What happened for the next six hours was terrible to say the least.

Some attached various objects to it.

Art critic Thomas Mcavilly, who watched the performance, recalls: "It all started small. Someone turned it around. Someone lifted her hands up. Someone touched her intimately."

One man used a blade to make an incision in her neck.

Then, as Mcavilly said, the following happened: "On the third hour, all her clothes were cut off with blades. On the fourth hour, the same blades began to examine her skin. She was sexually harassed. She was so focused on the work that she would not have resisted either rape or murder." Things have gotten even worse in the last two hours.

Someone made her point a gun at herself.

Abramovich's own impressions of what people did to her turned out to be even more terrifying. The artist recalls: "I felt raped, they cut off my clothes, they stuck rose thorns in my stomach, put a gun to my head, another one would have broken."

Some men undressed and groped her.

When six hours had passed, Abramovich began to walk among the audience. They couldn't look her in the eye.

Violence and sexual harassment reached incredible proportions by the end of the performance.

Abramovich noted after the performance that people did not want any conflict with her. They didn't want to be held responsible or judged for what they were doing. They seemed to want to forget how much they enjoyed hurting her.

"This work reveals something terrible about humanity. It shows how quickly a person can hurt you under the right circumstances. It shows how easy it is to depersonalize a person who does not resist, who does not defend himself. It shows that if appropriate circumstances are created, most "normal" people can obviously become very violent."

A video in which Marina Abramovich talks about her creepy performance: