Artist 'ready to die' after letting spectators do anything to her for six hours shared long-term impact it had
An artist who was 'ready to die' after letting spectators do anything to her for six hours has shared the long-term impact it had on her wellbeing.
Marina Abramović, famously took part in the 'Rhythm 0' performance in 1974 in which she placed 72 objects on a table and let strangers use them on her however they liked.
She said she would take full responsibility for anything that happened to her and by the end admitted she was 'ready to die'.
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The objects included flowers, perfume, weapons and even a gun.
While at first, people handed her the flowers or just watched her as she stood still, by the end of a six-hour period, Marina had been stripped of her clothing and suffered slash wounds to her skin.
At one point, a fight broke out among the audience after a loaded gun was put to her head.
The purpose of the performance was to see how far the public would go, but it came at a cost.
Decades on and Marina has spoken about the long-term impact it had on her, explaining that it affected her for some time afterwards.
"After the performance, I have one streak of white hair on my head," she told the Guardian.
"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."
Last year, the artist told the Royal Academy: "If there’s something I would like to do, I don’t do it.
"I only do something if I’m afraid of it, because that’s the whole point.
"If we always tend to do things that we like, then we are creating the same pattern, making the same mistakes again, and we never get out into unknown territory."
Years later, in 2010, Marina put on another extreme display, this time in New York.
At the Museum of Modern Art, Marina set up a table with an empty chair opposite her.
The performance was called 'The Artist is Present' and lasted two and a half months.
Marina sat in the chair for seven hours every day and welcomed strangers to sit in front of her to have a 'silent conversation', but they were told not to touch or speak to her at all.
Among those who took up Marina's invitation was actor Alan Rickman.
"I gazed into the eyes of many people who were carrying such pain inside that I could immediately see it and feel it," she later told the Guardian.
"I become a mirror for them of their own emotions. One big Hell's Angel with tattoos everywhere stared at me fiercely, but after 10 minutes was collapsing into tears and weeping like a baby."
Topics: Art, Community, News, Marina Abramović
Lucy Devine