In 1974, at an exhibition ground in naples, Italy, there was a small space in which a strange, thrilling and unpredictable plot was being staged.
In the center of the room stood a tall lady with short curly hair, deep features, and a suspender jacket, black coat and jeans. Around her, there were hundreds of spectators, both men and women. Next to them was a long table with 72 items.
These 72 items can be roughly divided into three categories:
One is a warm and harmless item that gives people pleasant happiness, including: lipstick, perfume, flower, comb, bell, flower, cotton, rose, feather, hairpin, bread, wine, honey, salt, candy, cake, wine, medallion, coat, shoes, yarn, grape, olive oil, rosemary, apple.
One category is neutral items: water, silk scarves, mirrors, glasses, cameras, brushes, bandages, ballpoint pens, books, hats, handkerchiefs, white paper, newspapers, soap, bells, flutes, plaster, matches, candles,
One is sharp, violent, offensive items, including: guns, bullets, whips, knives, forks, chains, nails, needles, safety pins, scissors, red paint, blue paint, white paint, kitchen knives, hammers, saws, axes, wood, sticks, sheep skulls, metal tubes, metal spears, scalpels, plates, chairs, leather belts, steel wire, sulfur.
There is a sign in the room like this:
There are 72 items on the table that can be used on me as needed, and I am the object. In the meantime, I will take full responsibility. Duration 6 hours (8 pm to 2 am).
At first, the woman, the audience, and the table were separated, keeping the three parties at a distance and not too close. The audience wrapped their hands around, looked at the woman, looked at the things on the table, and then looked at the same kind of audience around them, with hesitation, and no one had the next move.
The atmosphere was somewhat stiff and awkward. Until a man had the audacity to step forward and touch the woman's shoulder with his hand, although her eyes were open, but there was no reaction, let alone resistance.
The first person's attempt gave courage to the other audience, and the audience gradually poured in, and the woman was wrapped in a small circle.
Someone took a piece of cake and fed it to her mouth, someone took a rose and put it on her, and someone hung the medal around her neck. Everything looks harmonious and beautiful, full of love.
As time passed, people's movements became more and more, their courage grew, and things gradually turned.
Someone took lipstick from the table and painted and wrote on her face; someone stuffed a cigarette in her mouth and lit it for her.
Her body was anesthetized and she felt nothing at any touch from the viewer. However, she did not undergo general anesthesia, so her eyes were open and her mind was clear, and she could see whatever the audience did to her.
If this is still the category of mischief, the subsequent actions will gradually become shocking, even frightening.
Someone took scissors to shred her clothes, ripped off her coat, she was wearing suspenders, the skin of her neck and arms was exposed, and the audience smeared writing on a larger area of her body.
One of the men took the cold glass of water on the table and poured it directly over her head, wetting her hair and face. Later, the suspender was no longer there.
Someone placed the rose on her chest, and the sharp thorns on the stem of the flower cut through her skin, and blood flowed down.
Her upper body was naked, and a man leaned over and caressed her breasts and the rest of her body recklessly.
Others took a picture of her naked body, put the washed photo in her hands, raised her hands on her chest, and put her in a pose to show her body to everyone.
Others took the knife on the table and slashed at her skin one by one. Someone cut her neck and then leaned over to drink her blood. Someone took a cast and pasted it directly on her wound.
At first, when the audience made some movements to her, the expression on her face hardly changed, she looked forward calmly and deeply, her eyes were empty, no focus, no expression, and she was a perfect subject of experimentation.
But as the audience's movements became more and more excessive, she began to set her eyes on the audience in front of her, her eyes gradually filled with tears uncontrollably, and the expression on her face also collapsed, but such a fragile reaction did not make the audience stop the movements. She would also stare at the audience who made excessive moves, trying to frighten them, but still to no avail.
Later, the audience moved her to the table, mischievously, or perhaps just a temptation of evil thoughts, and they took a knife and inserted it into the wood between her legs. Another male spectator touched her genitals and even tried to rape her.
Actions like these were constantly being played out in the room, with more and more atrocities, and the audience's boldness growing, and to the climax of all this, a man picked up the pistol on the table.
He loaded the bullet into the chamber of the gun and slowly aimed it at the woman. At this moment, the staff rushed out, grabbed the pistol from the man's hand, and announced the end of the performance art event.
After a while, the anesthetic on the woman's body passed. She stood up and stared at the audience in front of her, her eyes still red, and her face still had tear marks.
She didn't say a word, just looked at them, but such a silent gaze was enough to embarrass and shame those viewers, who could not face the traces on her body, and rushed to quickly escape from the space.
The woman' name was Marina Abramovich, a contemporary performance artist known as the mother of performance art. This action is one of her performance arts titled Rhythm 0.
In 1973, she started the first performance of the Rhythm series, Rhythm 10, the last in the Rhythm series, at the Edinburgh Festival. What Marina felt from this performance art was a chill and fear, which she had only performed once, and she simply did not have the courage to start again.
This performance art sets the premise that Marina is an anesthetized individual who can be "disposed of" by the audience, and that the audience is not legally responsible.
Further, this means that Marina is no longer a flesh-and-blood citizen with the same behavioral response as they are, but an object, a passive subject of experimentation. It's an art full of risks. Viewers are not legally responsible, meaning they have no constraints and do not have to be punished for any of their atrocities.
This performance art space is closed, constructing a situation that is divorced from the real civilized society, where the audience can temporarily abandon their social identity, roles, morality, humanity, and rationality, completely release their inner wildness, desires, and evil thoughts, show the most vicious and ugly side of human nature, and become a thug.
Marina said in a later interview: "I realized that if you give yourself completely to the audience, they can really kill you. "If that performance art hadn't been paused, the gunshots might have actually sounded in that room."
This performance art has gone beyond art to refer to the fields of anthropology, ethics, psychology and political sociology, so it is also regarded as a psychological classic case for exploring the moral bottom line of human nature.
In addition to the audience that abandons morality and arbitrarily makes random moves to Marina, more viewers are wrapped around their hands and watching all this with playful, curious, and inquisitive eyes, and no one has stopped them. In this performance art, everyone except Marina herself seems to forget that she is a person and treat her as an object of casual fiddling and bullying.
This is the performance art that Marina is most reluctant to recall and most afraid of. It may not only be Marina who is disappointed, but also us who are watching and examining all this in a civilized society. Once again, we recognize bluntly that human nature cannot stand the test.
There are many experiments and art that explore human nature, and in 1971, Stanford University's psychology professor also conducted a famous "Stanford Prison Experiment." The professor and his colleagues built a simulated prison in the basement of Stanford University and recruited 24 healthy and mentally healthy experimenters for 14 days.
This group of volunteers, some playing the role of prison guards, with batons, have the power to patrol and supervise; some play prisoners, are shackled and locked in cells. In the first few days of the experiment, the volunteers seemed to be playing a novel game, and no one took it too seriously, but then the situation became more and more serious.
From the video, it can be seen that the volunteers who play the prison guards in this simulated prison still control their behavior during the day, but at night, with the absolute power they have, they gradually release their inner desire for control, barbaric impulses, and use various violent and dirty means to torture "prisoners". The "prisoner" could not withstand this overly real pressure and was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
The experiment was conducted for only 6 days. On the fifth day, the parents of the "prisoners" came with lawyers to "rescue" their children. The organizers watched everything as well, and they had to stop it all. The result has been determined.
We cannot imagine what a society that indulges humanity will look like. For thousands of years, human society has built and continuously improved moral and legal civilization to restrain and control the ugliness in human nature.
When Marina wakes up, she changes from an experimental subject to a real person, and the audience seems to wake up from an absurd theater and return to reality. As a result, they could not look into Marina's eyes, let alone face the scars they had left on her body. And this is precisely the indoctrination and deterrent effect that morality and law give to mankind.