Marina Abramović’s Rhythm 0: The Performance that Laid Bare Human Nature

Dec 30, 2024

7 min read

A woman holding photos in a crowded gallery setting. A shirtless figure faces the crowd. Text: "Marina Abramović's Rhythm 0." Mysterious mood.

At around midnight on 3 April 1974, in a small gallery in Naples, a man pressed a loaded gun into Marina Abramović's hand, wrapped her own finger around the trigger, and lifted the barrel to her temple. She had been standing motionless for four hours already, offering her body to a room full of strangers who could do whatever they wanted to her with any of 72 objects laid out on a table beside her. By that point her clothes had already been cut off with razor blades. Someone had cut her throat, just enough to drink from it. Nobody had told her to stop them. That was the entire point of the performance, and for a few seconds, in a crowded room in Naples, it very nearly killed her.

Who Was Marina Abramović?

Marina Abramović was born in Belgrade, in what was then Yugoslavia, in 1946, to parents who had both been decorated partisan fighters in the Second World War. She trained formally as a painter before turning to performance art in the early 1970s, drawn to work that used her own body as the material rather than paint or clay. By 1974, twenty-eight years old and largely unknown outside a small European avant-garde scene, she had already staged four increasingly dangerous solo performances: Rhythm 10, in which she stabbed a knife between her splayed fingers as fast as possible, cataloguing every cut; Rhythm 5, in which she lay inside a burning wooden star and lost consciousness from smoke inhalation before the audience realised she wasn't performing unconsciousness, she was actually unconscious; and Rhythm 2, in which she took medication for catatonia and then for psychosis, allowing the drugs to seize control of her body in front of an audience. Rhythm 0 was intended as the final piece in that series, and it went further than any of them.

The Rules of the Performance

In 1974, Marina Abramović staged what is now one of the most infamous and discussed performance art pieces in history: Rhythm 0. Performed in a gallery in Naples, this six-hour endurance piece was as much a study of human psychology as it was an artistic endeavour. Abramović stood motionless, offering herself as a "living object" for the audience to interact with, using any of the 72 objects she had laid out on a table. These objects ranged from the benign, a rose, a feather, bread, and grapes, to the dangerous, including a scalpel, a razor blade, nails, and even a loaded gun.

Abramović's instructions, stark in their simplicity, read:

“There are 72 objects on the table that one can use on me as desired. Performance. I am the object...During this period I take full responsibility.”

The performance began at 8 pm and lasted until 2 am, with no physical or metaphorical barriers between Abramović and her audience. The gallery space was shared equally, making it clear that the visitors were not merely observers; they were participants, integral to the unfolding drama. This was not art meant to be passively consumed; it demanded engagement, confrontation, and ultimately moral reckoning.

Split image features woman with "UNC", another pointing with "END", "NOPE".

The Performance Unfolds

At first, the audience hesitated. Many chose harmless actions, offering Abramović flowers or a gentle touch. Some turned her around, while others tentatively explored the more innocuous objects on the table. Art critic Thomas McEvilley, who was present at the performance, later recalled how quickly that changed:

"It began tamely. Someone turned her around. Someone thrust her arms into the air. Someone touched her somewhat intimately. As the night wore on, her clothes were cut off with razor blades. Later, the blades were turned on her skin. Her throat was cut so someone could drink her blood. There were multiple minor sexual assaults. She was so committed to the performance that she did not resist anything, even acts that could have led to rape or murder."

By the third hour, Abramović's clothes had been cut away, leaving her naked and vulnerable. Sexual assaults, minor but deeply violating, began to occur. The violence escalated further in the fourth hour, as blades were used to make small incisions on her skin. Blood was drawn, and one participant drank it directly from her neck.

Amidst these increasingly invasive acts, Abramović remained passive and motionless, a living embodiment of surrender. She later reflected on her experience:

"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."

The climax of Rhythm 0 came when a man placed the loaded gun in Abramović's hand and pressed it to her temple, wrapping her fingers around the trigger. In this moment, the tension that had been building finally broke. A protective faction within the audience, horrified by the escalating danger, physically intervened to stop the aggressor. A fight broke out between those who sought to harm Abramović and those who wanted to protect her.

The Audience’s Divided Response

The audience split into two distinct groups: those who acted with cruelty and those who sought to defend Abramović. Some participants wiped her tears and tried to shield her from further harm, while others egged on the violence or inflicted it themselves. This dynamic highlighted the complexity of group psychology, recalling experiments like the Stanford Prison Experiment, where the removal of accountability and the presence of peer influence led individuals to act in ways they might not under normal circumstances.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-H6J56e-QE

The performance ended after the six hours had elapsed. Abramović, who had been a passive object throughout, began to move. As she walked toward the audience, they scattered, avoiding her gaze and the confrontation her movement represented. The same people who had inflicted harm, and those who had failed to stop it, now recoiled from facing her as a person.

Two somber women, one with facial marks, in a black and white portrait.

Abramović’s Reflections and Interpretations

Abramović has since spoken extensively about the trauma and revelations of Rhythm 0:

“The experience I drew from this piece was that in your own performances you can go very far, but if you leave decisions to the public, you can be killed.”

She also confessed that she was prepared for the ultimate sacrifice:

“I was ready to die.”

The performance pushed the boundaries of her body and mind, exploring themes of pain, endurance, vulnerability, and trust. It also laid bare the darker aspects of human nature, exposing how quickly social norms and ethical boundaries can dissolve when people are given power without accountability.

Abramović’s nudity and vulnerability, while central to the performance, were not simply an invitation to view her as a sexual object. Instead, they functioned as a metaphor, confronting the audience with their own gaze and ethics. By presenting herself as an object, Abramović unmasked the unconscious violence embedded in that gaze and challenged the audience to reflect on their actions.

Bare-chested woman crying, holding photographs, adorned with rose branch and chain.

What Came After

Abramović has said she never again handed an audience the same degree of control over her physical safety. Two years after Rhythm 0, she moved to Amsterdam and met the German performance artist Ulay, born Frank Uwe Laysiepen. They became partners in life and work for the next twelve years, producing collaborative pieces that continued to test physical trust between two people, in one work he stood opposite her drawing a bow with an arrow aimed directly at her chest, the string held taut only by both of their body weight leaning in opposite directions.

Their relationship and collaboration ended in 1988 with a piece called The Great Wall Walk. They had originally planned to walk toward each other from opposite ends of the Great Wall of China and marry when they met in the middle. By the time Chinese authorities granted permission, eight years after they'd first proposed it, the relationship had broken down. They walked anyway, roughly 2,500 kilometres each, and when they finally met, they said goodbye and parted for over twenty years.

Abramović went on to a solo career that eventually made her, in the words of critics, the "grandmother of performance art." Her defining later work came in 2010, when the Museum of Modern Art in New York staged a retrospective titled The Artist Is Present.

For 736 hours over ten weeks, Abramović sat motionless and silent in the museum's atrium while members of the public took turns sitting opposite her, one at a time, for as long as they wished. It was a performance built on the same endurance and stillness that had defined Rhythm 0 thirty-six years earlier, but on entirely different terms: no objects on a table, no danger, full control retained by the artist throughout.

On the opening night, Ulay appeared unannounced and sat down across from her. It was their first meeting in over twenty years. She reached across the table and took his hands. Neither of them had planned it.

Legacy and Interpretation

The performance also raises questions about “care,” a concept encompassing protection, attention, and empathy. Some audience members showed genuine care for Abramović, while others used the objects to harm her. This dichotomy illuminated not just the choices people make when freed from accountability, but also the fragility of human connection when placed under strain.

At its core, Rhythm 0 is an exploration of the human condition rather than human connection. The performance revealed not only how far people can go but also how their actions are influenced by group dynamics and moral disengagement. The "care" some participants exhibited served as a counterpoint to the aggression of others, highlighting the duality of human nature. Rhythm 0 sits in a small, unsettling category of art that deliberately implicates its audience rather than simply asking them to look, a lineage that runs through to more recent, equally disquieting work like Défilé by the AES+F Group, which uses fashion imagery to force viewers to confront mortality in ways they didn't sign up for.

Exhibition display with table of various objects and projected video. — The table of objects recreated at the Royal Academy

Complex magazine has credited Abramović with popularising performance art to what it called "pop-star standards," a trajectory that began in a Naples gallery with a loaded gun pressed to her own temple by a stranger's hand, and one she was, by her own account, entirely prepared not to survive.