An artist who willingly let members of the public do whatever they wanted to her for six hours has shared a physical change it had on her body.
For the last several decades, Marina Abramović has made a name for herself as a renowned - and controversial - Serbian performance artist.
Known for her provocative and physically demanding exhibitions, Abramović often exploring themes of endurance, vulnerability, and the relationship between artist and audience.
This was perhaps demonstrated at its most extreme in one of her most infamous pieces: Rhythm 0.
Rhythm 0 was a six-hour performance piece staged in Naples, Italy, in 1974.
Abramović stood motionless in the center of a gallery, surrounded by a table of 72 objects. Per Far Out Magazine, these objects ranged from harmless items like roses and feathers to potentially dangerous ones like scissors, a scalpel, a gun, and a bullet.
"I am an object. You can do whatever you want with me and I will take full responsibility for the 6 hours," she told the audience, per the Marina Abramović Institute.
As the hours passed, the audience's behavior became increasingly aggressive. While some participants touched her gently, while others used the objects to inflict pain. Others acted as protectors as the acts against the artist grew more and more disturbing.
Clothes were torn from her body and she was stripped, a knife was dangerously placed between her legs, and she was subjected to assaults. One person even reportedly cut her neck. Others took photographs with a polaroid camera as all this unfolded.
Per Far Out, Abramović confessed: "I was ready to die."
When the time came to an end, Abramović started moving, and spectators fled.
Speaking to her own Marina Abramović Institute, she recalls that moment: "I start moving. I start being myself [...] and, at that moment, everybody ran away. People could not actually confront with me as a person."
During an interview with The Guardian in 2010, Abramović opened up about how the performance - and the horrors she experienced - physically changed her body.
"After the performance, I have one streak of white hair on my head. I cannot get rid of the feeling of fear for a long time. Because of this performance, I know where to draw the line so as not to put myself at such risk."
The "white hair" is something she also spoke about in an interview with the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). "I remember coming to the hotel that evening, looking at myself in the mirror and seeing really big piece of white hair," she recalled.
"It was six hours of real horror," she added. "I remember after six hours when the gallerist come and say this piece, it's finished that I start being by myself and start walking through the audience naked and with blood, and tears in my eyes, everybody run away, literally run out of the door."
As well as the sudden streak of white hair, Abramović also admitted that she still has "scars of the cuts", adding: "It was a little crazy. I realised then that the public can kill you. If you give them total freedom, they will become frenzied enough to kill you."
Abramović has also previously opened up about why she performed such a dangerous act to begin with.
In her interview with The Museum of Modern Art, Abramović revealed the piece was a response to the heavy criticism artists were getting at the time.
By the 1970s, artists were continuing to try and push the boundaries and deliver something never-before-seen to the public. The more this continued, the more criticism performance artists like Abramović were facing from the public, with some being slammed for their masochistic and sensationalist visions.
As a result, Abramović wanted to conduct a piece where she - the artist - would simply stand in a room and let the public do whatever they wanted. Of course, the crowd could have just let the six hours tick by and not subject her to numerous assaults -- but, as you've just found out, they didn't.
Rhythm 0 remains a controversial and thought-provoking work of art that continues to spark debate about the nature of performance art and terrifying possibilities of crowd mentality and anonymity.
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