Darkest Artist Ever In The History
The Only Thing She Fears Is An Art Piece Lacking Inspiration
Marina Abramović born in November 1946, is a Serbian performance artist known widely for her intriguing and challenging pieces. She has often been the face of much debate and controversy, and claims of satanism and devil worship have been made against her. Yet this artist is the source of some of history’s greatest pieces.
Today we explore arguably her most critically acclaimed work, “Rhythm zero”, performed in the year 1974.
What Makes An artist
The conception of her piece started even before she became an artist. She was born to parents who were high-ranking officials in the socialist government but grew up living with her grandmother who was devoutly Serbian orthodox.
These contradictions in her childhood made her an explosive, but an observant artist. Since the start of her journey in Belgrade during the early 1970s, she has used her body to be the subject and medium for her visual art.
Through her pieces, she has explored the physical and mental limits of her being and has persevered through pain, and exhaustion with no care for safety with the goal of achieving spiritual and emotional transformation.
These tensions between fear of abandonment and a need for control are at the core of her performance series by the name Rhythms.
The Setting
Rhythm 0 was set as a 6-hour performance art piece with the subject being Abramovic herself. She stood perfectly still in a studio in Morra, Naples while an audience was given the freedom to interact with her as they wished. Besides her, there was a table with 72 objects, ranging from roses to a gun loaded with a single bullet.
The instructions were clear, the audience was free to use any of the 72 objects on Abramovic and she would not be allowed to resist or react. She took full responsibility for whatever would happen in those hours.
Scary, isn’t it?
Progression of Rhythm 0"
The start was tame, people turned her around and waved her hands in the air. People gave her hugs and kisses, but in the third-hour things started getting a little heated. Her clothes were ripped off using razor blades, and in the next hour, the same blades started to cut her instead.
Someone slashed her throat to suck her blood, and many of the interactions could be classified as sexual assault. At one point a group carried her around the hall half-naked, then put her on a table and planted a knife into the table between her legs. They played with her body and posed with her for pictures.
But Abramovic was dedicated to her work, it is said that even in the case of rape or murder, she would have stood still offering no resistance.
Thankfully, a group of people with no reason besides pure human empathy stood for her and tried to protect her from their crueler companions. At one point the loaded gun was pressed against her head, and her own finger was made to play with the trigger, this caused a riot to break out in the audience.
At the conclusion of the six hours, the performance was announced to be over. With blood dripping from her cuts, a teary-eyed Abramovic broke character and walked around the room just silently confronting the audience. Too embarrassed of their own reality, the room emptied out quickly as people could not face the artist.
The Idea Behind The Piece
Abramovic made it clear at the beginning of the project that she was the object of the piece, but by setting no stage or any sort of distinction, she cleverly included the audience into the piece. At the end of it, they were as big a part of its creation as her.
Later she would recall the experience and explain how violated she felt by the audience’s behavior. If they are given the freedom to behave as they want, the atmosphere very quickly turns aggressive and unfriendly. A gun was pointed at her head, and she was sexually assaulted in front of so many people, her clothes stripped off her.
Her art piece forced a lot of people to think of morality and what keeps them from acting like savages. Nobody in the audience could face the reality of their actions after the performance.
Some Thoughts To Chew On
I believe this performance art is an incredible demonstration that when you grant people the freedom to do as they please, they will eventually turn into aggressive savages!
There was no need for the audience to act the way they did, but the temptation to use the crueler objects on the table paired with the security of anonymity brought out the worst in them.
Humans are the cruelest to the passive, quiet victim. Perhaps this is the reason that tyrants first aim to silence their victims because once the fear of confrontation is removed, there is nothing to stop them from being as inhumane as they please.
Want to follow up more from me and other amazing writers on Medium?
Hop on the chance to join: