In Naples, Italy, 1974, Marina Abramovich, the "mother of performance art", performed the most thrilling performance art of her life, anesthetizing herself and handing over her body to the audience at will, the work lasted 6 hours, she was almost killed by the audience in this performance.
Marina Abramovich is the greatest performance artist of modern times, revered as the "mother of performance art". She was born in Belgrade, the former Yugoslavia in 1946, the son of a World War II hero and the mother of a major officer.
From a military family, Marina Abramovich was a strict parent, and her mother militarized her until she was 29 years old, when her mother still demanded that she return home before 10 p.m. The powerful mother gave Marina a great mental depression, making her very eager to get rid of her mother's mental control and release herself, which also became a potential motivation for her to embark on the road of performance art.
When Marina Abramovich was 13 years old, her father asked a painter to teach her to paint, which opened her artistic initiation. The painter was unknown, but the way of teaching was quite novel, and in the first class, the painter casually cut a piece from the canvas, threw it on the ground, sprinkled some sand, smeared some dirty water, sprinkled some paint, and finally poured gasoline, lit it, and then said to her: "This is a brilliant sunset." Such an education opened up Marina's thinking.
From 1965 to 1970, Marina Abramović studied painting at the former Nansinaf Belgrae Academy of Fine Arts, and later entered Hamburg, Germany, and Paris, France, but her artistic ideas were not limited to two-dimensional painting art, but wanted to express her ideas through installation art and performance art.
In the 1970s, Marina began to create performance art, in order to explore the limits of human body and psychology, Marina boldly used her body as a material for artistic expression, creating the "Rhythm" series of works.
In the work "Rhythm 5", Marina in the center of the field with a gasoline soaked five-pointed star, she lit the five-pointed star, first cut her hair, nails into the fire, and then jumped into the five-pointed star surrounded by the middle and inner field, and finally due to lack of oxygen and suffocated coma, was rescued from danger. Later she said: "I was angry when I woke up, because I finally understood that the human body is limited, and when you lose consciousness, you can't control the present moment, you can't perform." "It can be said that Marina is really performing with her life.
Marina's most thrilling performance is the one mentioned at the beginning of the article, which is named Rhythm 0, which is the finale of her "Rhythm Series". In this work, she makes the audience a part of her work, wanting to test the limits of the audience's relevance to the performer.
In the venue of the show, there is a table with 72 items on the table, these items are pleasing apples, roses, honey, etc., dangerous, scalpels, needles, kitchen knives, etc., and even a gun and a bullet. There is also a sign next to it that reads: "There are 72 items on the table, which can be made on me as needed, and I am the object." During this time, I assume full responsibility for the duration: 6 hours (8 pm to 2 am). ”
According to Marina herself, "There's a phone with a bullet, so basically if the audience wants to put the bullet in the pistol, they can kill me." I really want to take that risk, and I want to know what it means for the public and what they would do in this situation. ”
At the beginning of the performance, Marina Abramović anesthetizes her body, but keeps her brain awake so that she can observe the audience's every move.
At first, the audience was still very gentle and just wanted to play with her, someone kissed her with a rose, someone fed her a cake. Gradually, the audience found that she did not react, and the behavior gradually became bold, some people scribbled on her face with lipstick, some people took a pen to paint on her body, and some people used scissors to cut her clothes.
In the end, the audience became more and more violent, Marina recalled: "They would cut my clothes, they would cut me with a knife and a knife close to my neck, drink my blood, and put a plaster cast on the wound." They would put me on the table and then involuntarily with a knife to the wood between my legs. ”
In the most thrilling scene, an audience member loads a bullet into a gun and tries to shoot her, but is fortunately stopped by a terrified audience.
During the whole process, Marina's eyes filled with tears and her heart began to fill with fear, but her body could not move. After the 6-hour humanity experiment, she stood up and walked toward the crowd, where people seemed to sense something in her tearful eyes and fled.
Marina said in a later interview: "This experience made me understand that if you give the whole decision to the public, then you are not far from death. ”
This performance art by Marina has produced great social repercussions, it is not only a work of art, but also an experiment of human nature, but also a classic model in anthropology, ethics, group ecology, behavioral psychology, cognitive psychology and political sociology. Marina used an extremely dangerous performance to tell us a very reasonable saying - do not test human nature easily.