To understand Rhythm 0 as a full performance is to abandon the myth of the single shocking photograph. Instead, we must trace its four distinct phases: (1) The Threshold of Politeness, (2) The Emboldened Gaze, (3) The Pleasure of Transgression, and (4) The Near-Fatal Abyss. The performance’s unique structure inverted the traditional power dynamic. By immobilizing her body (standing, expressionless) and declaring “I take full responsibility,” Abramović effectively surrendered legal and moral recourse. Crucially, the audience was not asked to consent to a contract with each other—only with the artist’s passivity.
This absence of mutual obligation between spectators created a vacuum. Early social psychology (Zimbardo’s Stanford experiment, 1971) predicted that structural permission without oversight enables cruelty. Rhythm 0 became live evidence. Phase 1 (8:00 PM – 9:30 PM): The Honeymoon of Inhibition Initially, the audience acted with exaggerated care. People gave her roses, held her hand, gently wiped her face with the feather. Actions were hesitant, accompanied by nervous laughter. The artist’s stillness was met with attempts to elicit a reaction—a smile, a blink. When none came, the audience began to treat her as genuinely non-human : a doll, a test dummy. rhythm 0 full performance
The Unbearable Permissiveness of Being: A Re-Evaluation of Marina Abramović’s Rhythm 0 (1974) To understand Rhythm 0 as a full performance
[Your Name] Course: Performance Art & The Ethics of Spectatorship Date: [Current Date] Abstract This paper analyzes Marina Abramović’s six-hour performance Rhythm 0 (1974) as a complete, unrepeatable experiment in the distribution of agency between artist and audience. While often cited for its shocking conclusion, the full performance —from the first tentative interactions to the final, violent escalation—reveals a systematic breakdown of social contracts. Using Abramović’s own documentation and contemporary accounts, this paper argues that Rhythm 0 functioned as a sociological Petri dish, demonstrating how absolute audience permissiveness does not lead to creative liberation but to the emergence of authoritarian cruelty. The performance’s enduring power lies not in the artist’s passivity, but in the audience’s active, progressive transformation from participant to perpetrator. 1. Introduction In the evening of 1974, at the Studio Morra in Naples, Marina Abramović placed 72 objects on a white table. They ranged from benign (feather, rose, honey) to pleasurable (perfume, wine) to dangerous (knife, scalpel, chainsaw) to lethal (a loaded pistol with one bullet). Beside the table stood the artist, her body the declared medium. The instruction sheet was brief: “I am the object. During this period I take full responsibility. Duration: 6 hours (8 PM – 2 AM).” the audience now began to compete.
The first cut came with the knife, a small scratch on her thigh. A second person painted her lips with lipstick, then drew a line down her neck. The crowd grew. Crucially, the audience now began to compete. One man placed the rose in her hand; another immediately removed it and cut her shirt buttons off. The actions became a public display of fearlessness. The props were no longer tools but trophies.