Rhythm 0
Marina Abramović

SALT Galata, Floor 1

In Rhythm 0 (1974), Marina Abramović offered herself as an object of experimentation for the audience, thereby including their actions in the performance itself. Abramović remained completely passive for six hours in front of a table containing 72 objects. Some, such as sugar, honey, and a rose contained the potential for pleasure. Others such as knives, whips, scissors, and a gun (with a single bullet) contained the potential for torment. The nature of the performance was completely in the audience’s hands.

During these six hours, she was alternately abused and defended by the participants, and eventually—after being drawn on, kissed, fed, soaked in water, stripped, and cut—a fight broke out after one participant loaded the pistol, placed it in her hand, and aimed it at her neck. Abramović kept her pledge, silently enduring both the best and worst the audience had to offer when confronted with the artist as blank canvas. When the performance was complete, she calmly broke her trance-like state and walked directly towards the crowd, which quickly dispersed. This emotional work tested Abramović’s faith, concentration, and willpower while simultaneously revealing the varying natures, both supportive and vindictive, hidden under the surface of a normally passive art audience.


Marina Abramović (b.1946) is a performance artist who began her career in the early 1970s. Active for over four decades, her work explores the relationship between performer and audience, the limits of the body, and the possibilities of the mind.

Source: Marina Abramović Institute

Courtesy Moderna galerija, Ljubljana