Warning: This article contains discussion of physical violence and sexual assault which may be distressing for some readers.
Marina Abramović has flirted with death throughout her career as the world's most famous performance artist, repeatedly putting her body on the line for the sake of her craft in her five-decade career.
The performance that brought her to global attention was perhaps her most dangerous and thought-provoking piece, Rhythm 0, where she stood in the middle of an art gallery in Naples surrounded by 72 objects. She invited spectators to do whatever they liked as she would not respond, with the crowd able to choose from harmless objects like feathers, honey, and grapes.
But they could also choose to pick up items like scissors, a scalpel, or even a gun and single bullet. Abramović said she would take 'full responsibility' for whatever happened during the six-hour art installation.
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On a recent episode of the Louis Theroux Podcast, the artist admitted that she walked into the studio 'ready to die,' but when the performance finally ended with a gun pointed at her head, the audience's reaction was what shocked her most.
Then just 23 years old, the artist said she was motivated to do the crazy act because she was 'so angry' about how the public viewed performance art, where she was willing to 'give my life for an idea.' Speaking on the podcast, she said 'the public went crazy,' during 1974's Rhythm 0, without her even doing anything. The artist admitted that some in the crowd were ready to kill.
"The gallery said six hours is over, I start walking towards [the] public, I was naked, I was covered in blood, I was in a terrible state, someone cut my neck and all the rest of it."
After everything they had done to her over the show's six-hour duration, including stripping off her clothes, cutting her, and drinking her blood, the crowd did not stand around to applaud.
Instead, they all ran away from the woman who had stoically stood still for six hours while they chose to physically abuse her, even committing sexual assault.
"And then I was walking to them, and they all ran away," she told Theroux of the moment she regained her agency.
While Abramovic's retelling of events positions the audience as aggressive and violent, some in the crowd took it upon themselves to look after the young woman if the crowd escalated things to a deadly place.
American art critic Thomas McEvilley, who was present, argues that Abramović surrendering her free will revealed a great deal more about the mentality of sections of the audience.
He said: "Faced with her abdication of will, with its implied collapse of human psychology, a protective group began to define itself in the audience.
"When a loaded gun was thrust to Marina's head and her own finger was being worked around the trigger, a fight broke out between the audience factions."
Despite making her name with this performance, the avant-garde artist refused to do anything as dangerous again, implementing a no touching and no talking rule at her 2010 The Artist is Present piece in New York.
Topics: Art, Marina Abramović, Podcast
William Morgan