05/11/2025
Rythm 0:
A raw experiment in human nature that exposed how quickly empathy can vanish when accountability disappears.
Serbian artist Marina Abramović wanted to understand one haunting question: What happens when a human being gives up all control?
So she stood motionless in a gallery for six hours.
Before her — a long table with 72 objects.
Among them: a rose, a feather, honey, scissors, a knife… and a loaded gun.
A simple sign beside her read:
> “There are 72 objects on the table that one can use on me as desired.
I am the object.
During this period, I take full responsibility.”
At first, visitors were gentle. Someone offered her a rose. Another kissed her cheek. But as the hours passed, curiosity turned to cruelty.
They began cutting her clothes with scissors. Drawing blood with thorns. Pressing the knife against her skin.
Someone even loaded the gun and placed it in her hand, guiding it toward her own neck.
The room fell silent. Others intervened and stopped it — barely.
For six hours, Marina didn’t move, flinch, or resist.
She allowed the world to reveal itself — not through her actions, but theirs.
When the performance ended, she finally moved.
And something remarkable happened: the same people who had just hurt her couldn’t meet her eyes.
They ran away — fleeing from the mirror they had become.
Years later, Marina said:
> “If you leave it up to the audience, they can kill you. I learned that in six hours.”
🎨 Rhythm 0 became one of the most chilling and important performances in art history — a raw experiment in human nature that exposed how quickly empathy can vanish when accountability disappears.
In 1974, Marina Abramović, the Serbian-born performance artist whose work repeatedly pushed the boundaries of body, endurance and vulnerability, presented one of her most extreme pieces: Rhythm 0.
It was the culmination of her “Rhythm” series (Rhythm 10, 5, 2, 4…) that explored pain, body, audience and control.
For six hours she stood completely passive in the gallery of Studio Morra in Naples. On a table beside her were 72 objects — some benign, some dangerous — which the audience could use on her body in any way they wished.
A sign beside the table instructed:
> “There are 72 objects on the table that one can use on me as desired.
I am the object.
During this period I take full responsibility.”
The objects ranged from a rose, honey, bread, grapes, perfume and wine — to scissors, a scalpel, nails, a metal bar, a loaded gun and a single bullet.
There was no stage separation; Abramović and her spectators occupied the same space. The boundaries between artist, object, audience dissolved — intentionally.
The Experience: Gentle First, Then Unraveling
At the beginning, the audience was tentative: some gave her a rose, touched a feather across her skin, offered honey or grapes. The tone was curious and almost caring.
As time progressed, something shifted. The absence of resistance on the artist’s part, the lack of consequence, emboldened spectators. Scissors began to appear. Her clothes were cut. Rose-thorns pressed into her stomach. One person pointed the loaded gun at her head — and placed her finger on the trigger.
Abramović later said:
> “What I learned was that … if you leave it up to the audience, they can kill you. I felt really violated.”
At the six-hour mark, as planned, she moved. She walked toward the audience. And the moment she did, the spectators scattered — they could no longer face her as a person. They had been treating her as an object.
The Aftermath: Scars, Reflection, Legacy
Though the piece lasted only six hours, its impact reverberated. Abramović emerged physically and emotionally changed: bruised, shaken, transformed. In interviews she recalled walking out “alone inside” and feeling the weight of what had been done.
Rhythm 0 became a watershed in performance art — exposing how quickly empathy can fade when power shifts, when boundaries dissolve, when one person gives up control and another assumes it. Critics compare it to the psychological experiments of Milgram and Stanford — showing how ordinary people can become perpetrators when they feel disentangled from responsibility.
The work continues to be studied not just in art history, but psychology, sociology and ethics: as an inquiry into objectification, violence, agency, and consent.
