Performance and Time

Marina Abramovic : Rhythm 0 (1974)

“. . . the crucial aspect of a performance is the direct relationship with the audience, the transmission of energy between the doer and the viewer. What is a performance? It is a sort of material and spiritual construction in which an artist places him/herself in front of an audience. It is not a theatre play, it is not something you have to learn and then repeat, identifying with a character. It is a totally direct transmission of energy. “ 

- Abramovic, 1998

Yugoslavian artist Marina Abramovic is best known for her performance work beginning in the 1960s.  In most of Abramovic’s work she uses her body as the primary material.  Because the majority of her work is performance, time is also an integral component in her work.  Time plays a huge role in Abramovic’s performances, not only as a factor during the performance but also as a factor once the performance is over. 

What is Rhythm 0?

In Marina Abramovic’s 1974 performance Rhythm 0, she provided viewers with 72 objects and invited them to use any of the objects on her at their own will.  For six hours, Abramovic took total responsibility for anything the viewers chose to do to her.  Some of the objects could be used to cause pain and some pleasure.  The table contained items such as a loaded gun, feathers, a rose, a polaroid camera, and lipstick.  Marina made herself completely vulnerable, willingly putting herself in harms way.

Body as a Canvas

In a way, Abramovic was offering her body as a blank canvas.  She was allowing viewers to use her body to create something, while simultaneously having the ability to destroy her.  The performance lasted from 8:00 pm until 2:00 am and by the end of the performance Abramovic’s clothes and throat were cut, her stomach was pricked with rose thorns, and her blood was licked.  One audience member even put the gun to her temple. The audience was using the objects to try and destroy her body; Abramovic’s body was the material and destruction was the medium.   

Role of the Participants

Without participants this piece would not exist.  The participants are the creators while also acting as the destroyers.  Because of her passivity, the audience gained full control.  In response to the work, Abramovic states that she “could have been killed. The idea was: to what extent can we be vulnerable? How far the audience can go and what it can do with your body? It was a terrible experience. [She] was just a thing, elegantly dressed and facing the audience. In the beginning, nothing happened, but then the audience became more and more aggressive, projecting on [her] three images: the Madonna, the mother and the whore. The weirdest thing is that the women almost didn’t act, but they were telling the men what to do.”  Her passivity provoked the audience to treat her as if she wasn’t human.  Because she was not reacting to their actions, they were inclined to continue acting.    

The Effect of Time (During the Performance)

Although the actions of the participants play a huge part in the creation of this piece, time is also an important factor.  If participants were given more time, who knows what could have taken place?  Marina Abramovic gave this nonlinear event a predetermined length providing the performance with a set beginning and set end.  As time progressed, participants became more dangerous.  It wasn’t until three hours into the piece that people began to really engage with Abramovic.  Time functioned as a component of the destruction.  It was like a ripple effect, once one person began to act others started doing the same.  The progression of time made it easier for participants to feel inclined to harm her.  Time also dehumanized her.  The longer they were with her, the less they saw her as a person and more as an object.  

For the duration of the piece, the audience members had full control.  The potential of the piece was really in their hands.  During the six hour performance members had no problem using any of the materials Abramovic provided and acting in extremely inhumane ways.  But once the piece was over, it was a different story.  Demaria states that “at the end of those six hours, when such a performance, in which the everyday sacrificial offer of the female body is inscribed, eventually ends, the audience runs away, totally unable to assume and to confront the roles and the stereotypes it itself has been playing, and with the images that it contributed to create. Or the public, after being an actor in the drama, goes back to being but a frightened spectator, one that can do nothing but flee from that which it itself has just enacted.”  Once the time is over, the piece is over, therefore Marina is no longer an object and becomes a person.  The artwork is finished after the the six hours and the creation is complete.  Having acted in such a way the viewers leave.  This work plays as both a social experiment and an artwork.  It tells us a lot about what a human is willing to do in certain situations.      

The Work Over Time

Time is not only a component of the work while it happened but it plays a major role in the work today.  A performance happens once, although performance can be “re-created” the original only takes place one time, therefore this only allows viewers that are present access to a memory from the original.  This piece technically could be re-created, but it can never be exactly replicated.  The time and place in which it took place is now in the past.  Although the piece can be remembered through pictures or video documentation, it is impossible to physically access the performance ever again.  So in a way, time also destroys the accessibility and authenticity of the piece. 

In Frazer Ward’s text he discusses a term coined as the “after-the-factness” of performance.  One view of performance art states that you had to be there, in the here and now.  But that is impossible.  So there is a set of relations put into effect.  This relationship is between the event that took place in a certain place and time and its documentation and memory.  In this text Ward discusses the way in which performances are similar to ephemeral practices.  Performances create a memory (for those who witnessed it but also those who were not present) and they also create error.   He states that “performances themselves become screens on which people project, just as much as the body of the artist in performance.”  Not being there for the live performance leaves a lot of room for interpretation.   If you did not witness the performance first hand, you do not have any direct experience.  In a way, the performance becomes hear say.  

Vulnerability

Why would someone consciously choose to put their lives in the hands of others.  This performance really says something about the lengths people will go when given control.  Just because Abramovic gave people permission to harm her doesn’t mean they had to, so then why did they?  Remember, participants were also given objects that could be used for pleasure.  Maybe it’s because they thought it was important to the performance or maybe it’s because all the people there were psychologically unstable. 

Similar to other performances at the time, there is an element of masochism in this work.  Like other performance works, such as Chris Burdens Shoot (1971), in which he had a friend shook him in the arm, there is an element of masochism that is necessary for the work to exist.  In regards to Burden’s work, Gille’s Deleuze’s states that “each of the individuals involved, therefore, agreed to tacit or specified terms of a ‘contract’ with the artist...[T]he crucial implication of such masochistic performances concerns the everyday agreements - or contracts - that we all make with others but that may not be in our best interests.”      

Unlike Burden’s piece, the outcome of pain in Rhythm 0 was not predetermined. In regards to Marina’s work, Ward states that “whatever was to happen during those six hours was evidently far less precisely imagined or organized than the possibilities posed by Ono’s scissors, or by Burden’s very specific activity.”  Unlike Burden and Ono’s works, Abramovic gave her audience many options and did not tell them what to do with the objects.  They weren’t told to do anything specific they were just given permission.  She created a situation that allowed the audience to decide what to do.    



Response to Comments: 

Abramovic is interested in testing how much her body can handle and also in agency. If performed today, I don’t think that the performance would be as shocking as it was when it was originally performed.  But I think the way the participants acted has more to do with human nature rather than the time period in which it was performed.  I think that universally, people strive for power and take advantage of it when given control.  I don’t know if I think that it says anything universal about people being “allowed” to destroy bodies in particular, but says more about the lengths people will go when given power.  I think that most people would argue that if they were part of the audience, they would not have acted the way many of the participants did.  But I’m sure that’s what many of the participants thought before they were invited into that setting.  I think because this is framed as a “performance” work, it creates an atmosphere  which allows the viewers to act in ways they usually would not. Once the “performance” is over, the viewer exits the realm of art and returns to reality.  Context plays a huge role in the work.  In a social psychological sense I think this piece really touches on social rules, social norms, and expectation.  It makes me wonder about people’s motives in day to day life. 

     It is the artist’s passivity that gives the audience control.  If the participants thought she would respond or react to their actions they would have been less inclined to destroy her.  I do not think that passivity is what prompts all works to be destroyed.  When something or someone is passive they are capable of being controlled.  I do not believe that it is the passivity of a work that makes it an object to be destroyed.  I think it goes much further than that.  I think that passivity, in this particular example, is one of the factors that leads to destruction.  But, similar to many other works, I think that there are deep rooted political, social, and symbolic beliefs which cause action.    

Abramovic relinquishes control over her body and people take advantage of that.  This says a lot about people’s desire to consume, control, and own things.  Her passivity in a way does affect ownership.  I don’t believe that the audience is acting, I think that they are resisting social rules and impulsively reacting.  It might be that the viewers let go of their inhibitions for the sake of art. They throw social rules out the window and take advantage of being dominant in a situation.  I think acting is the wrong word.  I think that many participants would argue that they were “creating a piece of art”.  It might have been that the participants saw their acts of destruction as creation and in a way they were.  This piece could have had a more positive outcome, but it was almost as if they chose to destroy her because in any other environment this would never have been allowed.  This situation in a way did provide the participants with “immunity” which prompted them to destroy.  And I agree that the women audience member’s passivity is equally as bad as the men who actually caused harm.  

With regards to authenticity, recreations are authentic as recreations.  But a recreation can not be said to be originally authentic.  There is always an original.  I personally feel that recreations are not as authentic as the original even if endorsed by the artist, they are authentic for what they are, recreations.

As an artist, she gives permission for her body to be used as a canvas.  She is allowing her body to be destroyed as both the artist and the object.  I think that once Abramovic provides the audience with control, she takes on the role of the “passive” object and in a way detaches herself as the artist.  As I stated earlier, in a way the audience is the artist.  Although she provides the framework of the piece, they create the piece.  

The idea of a “sexual layer” was addressed and I definitely think that there was a sexual layer to this performance.  The sexual layer had to do with the actions being done primarily by male participants.  Also, the fear of being violated sexually is a huge aspect of the performance.   The Stanford Prison Experiment was addressed in one of the comments and I think there is a great connection to be made between this performance and that study.  In that experiment, participants were given the identity of a guard or a prisoner and just being given a new “identity” caused people to act in extremely obscene ways.  The prisoners in a sense were treated as objects, just as Abramovic was. 

Post made by Megan Ogle 

Sources: 

1. Demaria, Cristina. "The Performative Body of Marina Abramović Rerelating (in) Time and Space." European Journal of Women's Studies 11.3 (2004): 295-307.
2. Schimmel, Paul.     Out of actions :   between performance and the object, 1949-1979 /    Los Angeles, Calif. :   The Museum of Contemporary Art   New York :   Thames and Hudson,   1998. 
3. Stiles, Kristine.  Marina Abramović /London ; New York : Phaidon, 2008. 
4. Westcott, James,     When Marina Abramović dies :   a biography /    Cambridge, MA :   MIT Press,   2010. 
5. Ward, Frazer.  Marina Abramovic: Approaching Zero.  The 'do-it-yourself' artwork :   participation from fluxus to new media /    Manchester, UK ;   New York :   Manchester University Press ;   New York :   Distributed in the United States exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan,   2010.