The audience panicked. They ran for the exits. They could not look her in the eye. As Abramovic later said in her memoir Walk Through Walls : “If you leave the decision to the public, you will be killed.”
The rules were deceptively simple. Abramović placed 72 objects on a table, ranging from objects of pleasure to objects of destruction. These included a feather, a rose, a perfume bottle, honey, a whip, scissors, a scalpel, a metal bar, a gun, and a single bullet. She then stood passive and motionless against a wall. marina abramovic rhythm 0
: Provides a detailed artwork entry discussing the ritualistic and cathartic nature of the work [7]. The audience panicked
The answer lies in its terrifying simplicity. Abramovic did not paint a canvas or sculpt a stone; she sculpted consequence. She asked a simple, devastating question: If you could do anything to another person without fear of reprisal, what would you do? As Abramovic later said in her memoir Walk
Over the course of the performance the audience moved from tentative curiosity to increasingly invasive and violent actions: they cut her clothes, pricked her with thorns and pins, smeared her with honey and wine, wound her with barbed wire, and at one point one person held the loaded gun to her head. By the end of the six hours she had been physically and emotionally tested; afterward she walked through the gallery and the visitors fled.