Marina Abramovic was born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia in 1946. She is a performance artist and she calls herself the “grandmother of performance art.” Her work demonstrates an exploration between performer and audience, the limits of the body, and the possibilities of the mind. Her work is the epitome of the phrase “mind over matter.” She believes that once a person enters the performance state he or she could make his or her body do things that the person could never normally do. Her work is influenced by her rough childhood.
Rhythm 0, which Abramovic created in 1974, is the piece that interests me the most. In this she shows the relationship between performer and audience. She made herself an “object” and had the public act on her. She placed 72 objects on a table, which the audience was allowed to use in any way they chose. They could choose to inflict pain or pleasure. At first the audience was careful with her. As time went on the audience started to inflict pain upon her. People tore her clothes, stuck rose thorns in her stomach and one person even aimed a gun at her head and luckily another person took it away. It really surprised me how people reacted so aggressively towards her as time went on. In her other works she tested the physical limits of her own body but in this work she tested other people’s mental limits as well.
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