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Absolute Freedom

By
SUN HAN YUE

In a six-hour art performance, a great performance artist named Marina Abramovic proved to people:If you hand over all the decision-making power to the audience, you're not far from death.

The Initiator

Who is Marina Abramovic?

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To know more about Marina Abramovic click here

The beginning of Rhythm 0

Rhythm 0 (1974) was a six-hour work of performance art by Yugoslav artist Marina Abramovic in Studio Morra, Naples. The work involved Abramovic standing still while the audience was invited to do to her whatever they wished, using one of 72 objects she had placed on a table. These included a rose, feather, perfume, honey, bread, grapes, wine, scissors, a scalpel, nails, a metal bar, and a gun loaded with one bullet.

There were no separate stages. Abramovic and the visitors stood in the same space, making it clear that the latter were part of the work. The purpose of the piece, she said, was to find out how far the public would go: "What is the public about and what are they going to do in this kind of situation?"

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What would audience do?

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Marina Abramovic anaesthetized her whole body except her head, signed the legal document and was fully responsible for any situation that was about to happen. At first, the audience was a little overwhelmed and curiously talked with each other in a low voice. After a while, they awared that the show had begun......

Audience started to touch her

Time passes by quietly

Marina remained motionless---Girls began to "decorate" her with ropes and cardboard as fiddling a doll.

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But then something changed

Someone began to paint Marina's face with her lipstick.

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With precedent, the audience began to become bolder and bolder.

After 4 hours

The onlookers gave numb smiles and the terrible thing is far from over.

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Until two men filled the gun with bullets and pressed her finger to see if she would pull the trigger.

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However, at this time, some of the audience thought it was too much. They rushed to throw the gun away and some people began to accuse the two men.

Others felt that it was a kind of performance, and when it reached its climax, there was no reason to stop. As a result, fierce clashes broke out between the two sides.

At the same time, Marina had been scarred, full of holes, and her beautiful eyes silently left tears of despair and fear.

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Awaking after “hilarity”

As Abramovic described it later: "What I learned was that ... if you leave it up to the audience, they can kill you." ... "I felt really violated: they cut up my clothes, stuck rose thorns in my stomach, one person aimed the gun at my head, and another took it away. It created an aggressive atmosphere. After exactly 6 hours, as planned, I stood up and started walking toward the audience. Everyone ran away, to escape an actual confrontation." When the gallery announced the work was over, and Abramovi? began to move again, she said the audience left, unable to face her as a person. cover photo

Epilogue

Find the GitHub repo here.