Marina Abramovic – The Basic Nature of Human | True Inspirational Story
Marina Abramovic – born November 30, 1946) is a Yugoslavia-born performance artist. Her work explores the relationship between performer and audience, the limits of the body, and the possibilities of the mind .
Abramovic also known to many as “grandmother of performance art” and is active over 4 decades . This true incident puts light on One of her earliest performance that is still being talked today and make us think What is the basic nature of Humans ?
Maria Abramovic – grandmother of performance art
Performance
Abramovic staged a performance piece called “Rhythm 0” at studio Morra in Naples,Italy .
Challenge : Marina Abramovic would stand still for 6 hours straight and would let people who came to see her to do whatever they wanted to do to her body .
Photographers Only
Instructions :
- Abramovic would stand still for 6 hours straight
- There are 72 objects in the table which can be used on her body as desired
- During this time she , i.e. Abramovic takes full responsibility
- Duration 6 hours (8PM – 2 AM)
At first only photographers were going near her looking at her observing how she is looking like a real statue .
Photographers Only
After a while when people noticed no movement they started picking stuff from the table . Among the objects on the table were :
- Rose
- Perfume
- Piece of bread
- grapes
- wine
- feathers
- flowers
- even dangerous stuff like scissors
- nails
- metal
- bar
- knife
- razor
- blades
- and finally a pistol with one bullet .
Table With Tools
People tried to change her body position , some made her sit on a chair to humiliate her , some attached things to her body while some tried to touch her to harass her .
Made Abramovic Sit
change Abramovic Position
Some one thought of putting a glass of water on her but nothing changed and she was immovable .
Glass of Water on Abramovic
when all this was done , someone used a blade to make a cut on her neck and then someone made her point a gun to herself .
make a cut on neck
Make her point gun to herself
Someone kissed her
Kiss Abramovic
Then there were some people who undressed her .
Undressed Abramovic Clothes
Is She Crying
Abramovic’s own account of what people did to her was even more heartbreaking .
She recalled
” I felt raped , they cut off the clothes , they struck me with thorns of rose in the stomach aimed the gun to my head , another came apart “
When the six hours were over , Abramovic started to walk among the people and talk to them and realized that no one could look her in her face . She observed that people didn’t want any sort of confrontation with her . They didn’t want to be held accountable or judged or what they did . It seemed as if they wanted to forget what they just did .
This work reveals something terrible about humanity. It shows how fast a person can hurt you under favorable circumstances .It shows how easy it is to dehumanize a person who does not fight , who does not defend himself. It shows that if he provides the stage , the majority of ‘normal people , apparently can become truly violent”
Note : Source of this information is Marina Abramovic Institute and images are taken using screenshots of YouTube Video .
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