‘Marina Abramovic told her audience that she would be the passive attendee of the performance, and would allow them to be the force upon her. She had placed 72 objects upon a table and let them use the objects on her in any way they chose for the period of 6 hours. Among the objects were a feather, a rose, honey, scissors, a whip, a scalpel, a gun and a single bullet to fit the gun’ (Veritas, 2013).
This image shows the 72 different objects that were laid out for audience members to choose from and use upon Marina in anyway they wished.
This image shows different times within the performance where audience member’s were manipulating Marina’s body.
Finally, here is an image of Marina at the end of the performance. In Veritas’s post about the rhythm 0 performance, they state how Marina said:
‘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’ (2013).
Even though our ideas about our performance are not to the extremes of that shown by Marina, however, the performance is an inspiration for our final piece. This is due to us wanting to leave the audience members to do what they like with the materials which have been provided for them within the given space. In a sense we are leaving them to their own devices to play around and interpret things within their own way. We do not want to manipulate or influence the way in which audience members respond to the different stations so we agreed it would be best to leave them to their own devices. Some audience members may be more interactive with the space than other members but that isn’t a problem, for all audience members are different and will respond to different things in various ways.
In one of the stations titled Colour explosion, we will be leaving a blank canvas with pots of paints, sponges, paint brushed and mixing pallets for the audience members to express themselves in anyway they feel necessary. The end result will be interesting to see the variation in colour and images created.
Work Cited :
Veritas, Vincent Omnia (2013) Marina Abramovic After Performing Rhythm 0 + two Videos, Online: http://www.bestgore.com/sexual-disaster/marina-abramovic-rhythm-0-videos/ (Accessed April 30th 2013).