"I go so far until it hurts so much that I no longer feel anything"
Abramovic performed Rhythm 0 in a place and in a time that reinforced the already fiery power of its concept even further.
Naples, southern Italy, mid seventies.
The scene opens up like this: an array of different common objects lays on a long rectangular table, and all that is over it is at your disposal. You can decide to use anything you see on that table against the artist however you please, offering tenderness or venting your frustrations. All without being liable for any crime. A no-man's land.
Imagine the initial confusion and at least momentary reluctance to be the first person in the room picking up one of those objects and abusing the performer.
You might take that rose, gently caressing Marina's neck, then down her left arm, her skin shivering imperceptibly, pale bums forming up in the cold room.
You gaze at others in the public, hesitating your action, and ignoring who is going to move next.
Then someone grabs a rose thorn, be it only to get it going and showing the bravery of the first move. They touch Marina's skin a little deeper, her skin turns red until a fine blood line starts sliding down.
Marina stands there, motionless. She obviously cannot know what is going to happen, how much kindness or pain is she going to feel. If she's going to even be alive after the scheduled 6 hours of the happening. What is going on in there is extremely violent. She is tempting fate.
"Performance is a means of coping with fear"
The moment someone takes the gun from the table and is about to pull the trigger, the police are called, avoiding a cold, abrupt ending without a culprit.
"I go so far until it hurts so much that I no longer feel anything"
What is it that brought Marina to deliberately put herself at the mercy of strangers and yet releasing them from liability?
Why would she not allow them to be responsible for their own actions?
She accepts the uncertainty of her fate through a confined yet accelerated time-lapse, so short in its duration that the pain is both incredibly intense and limited. That pain is amplified in a way that shuts down all other emotions, fear included. That pain is purposeful, as she knows she will never be the same again.
"If one inflicts pain on oneself to free oneself from the fear, the pain is acceptable"
Marina's childhood has been moulded by her mother's controlling personality and rigid demeanours, practically suffocating the little girl's individuality to form, emerge, and express itself.
The mother's despotic raising methods could have led to a rebellious woman. Yet, Marina didn't question the violence of the woman, as she didn't know any other parenting. Instead, Marina's desire was to please the parent and be anything her mother wanted her to be, through an impossible race to an organized perfection.
"I've always felt responsible for everyone"
She wanted to please her mum so bad, desperately desiring to be accepted and condoned. The envy felt by her mother towards her made the little girl want to disappear, to be as little as she could.
The only way Marina knew to please her, was to become as obedient and transparent as she could possibly be, in an effort not to disturb, and appearing only when she'd match those unattainable standards.
Nevertheless, Marina doesn't succumb in a standard way. She possesses inside her a wireless hope prompting her to keep going down a spiral that will actually have a very unexpected gateway.
The pistol on that table is a symbol of the fundamental hope she's engraved in, because what if they won't kill her? what if those strangers will see the unique human that she is, and decide to spare her life. Someone must notice it!
The survival of the artist at the end of those 6 hours is one of the proofs Marina needed in order to be noticed in her inner value.
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