An artist who once allowed spectators to do anything they wanted to her has revealed the moment it all took a disturbing turn.
Serbian-born Marina Abramović is renowned for pushing the limits of both human endurance and artistic expression.
Throughout her groundbreaking career, she has subjected herself to physically and mentally grueling challenges in the name of art—whether cutting herself on stage or maintaining silent eye contact with strangers for hours. Her performances often provoke reactions ranging from shock to deep introspection.
One of her most extreme experiments took place in 1974, when she granted the public unrestricted control over her body for six hours.
What unfolded was deeply unsettling, leaving Abramović to reflect on the precise moment everything spiraled out of control.
In this performance, Abramović stood still beside a table filled with 72 objects that ranged from innocuous items like feathers to dangerous tools like scissors and even a loaded gun.
Her instructions were stark: the audience could use any of the objects on her however they wished, while she remained passive and unresisting.
She later reflected on the experience, saying, “I had a pistol with bullets in it, my dear. I was ready to die,” as reported by The Guardian.
At the start, the audience was hesitant, seemingly unnerved by the weight of their freedom over her. Initial interactions were gentle – some handed her flowers, others posed her like a mannequin.
But over time, the atmosphere took a sinister turn.
As the hours passed, Abramović’s complete vulnerability and the absence of consequences emboldened increasingly disturbing behavior.
Some spectators tore her clothes, others used sharp objects to cut her skin, and one even aimed a loaded pistol at her head.
“I still have scars from where people cut me,” she recalled. “They took thorns from a rose and pressed them into my stomach. The public can kill you. This is what I wanted to understand.”
The performance evolved into a chilling social experiment, exposing how quickly societal norms can unravel when boundaries are removed.
As the crowd’s aggression escalated, the line between passive onlookers and active participants blurred. Feeding off each other’s actions, they became emboldened, pushing the limits of cruelty.
After six harrowing hours, the performance came to an end. Bloodied and tearful, Abramović began to move—breaking the spell of her stillness. Confronted with the reality of their actions, the audience fled the gallery in horror, according to the Marina Abramović Institute.
This experiment laid bare the unsettling depths of human nature when given absolute freedom without accountability.
For Abramović, endurance and vulnerability have always been central to her artistic mission—more than just spectacle, her work explores pain, resilience, and human connection. As she often states, “the medium is the body.”
Her willingness to subject herself to extreme risks is as thought-provoking as her performances themselves. She believes confronting one’s deepest fears is a path to growth:
“When you’re afraid of something, face it. Go for it. You become a better human being.”
With Rhythm 0, this philosophy was tested to its extreme. The audience’s descent into brutality led Abramović to a profound realization—she had been willing to risk death for her art.
The performance was not just a test of endurance, but a stark demonstration of how easily both compassion and cruelty can emerge when power is left unchecked.
Now 77, Marina Abramović reflected on her 1974 performance in an interview on the Marina Abramović Institute’s YouTube channel, recalling, “At the beginning, nothing really happened. The public was really nice.”
But as time passed, spectators’ actions grew increasingly violent.
Abramović later noted that the turning point came when the audience realized there were no consequences for their behavior.
By the end, the crowd had split into two factions—those trying to protect her and those intent on harming her.
Tensions peaked when a loaded gun was aimed at her head, triggering a fight among spectators. It remains unclear whether this moment ended the performance or if the six hours had simply elapsed.
Regardless, Abramović walked away with a chilling revelation about human nature:
“What I learned was that… if you leave it up to the audience, they can kill you.”
