“There are 72 objects on the table that one can use on me as desired. I am the object.”
Yugoslavian performance artist Marina Abramović is the woman many credit as “the grandmother of performance art.” She was featured on Sex and the City, collaborated with James Franco and . Somehow, her celebrated 1988 art piece, “The Lovers: the Great Wall Walk” — in which she and her longtime lover and collaborator Ulay started at opposite ends of the Great Wall of China, to meet in the middle as a way of signaling the break up of their 12-year
relationship, seems like something that happened over a million years ago now.
In light of the events going on in the world today, her work may perhaps be more intensely important now than it ever has been before, particularly if you are either a woman or someone with a sincere interested in understanding the depth of what
women experience.
To understand why that, it is important to first revisit a performance piece she presented as a young woman over 40 years ago, titled “Rhythm O.”
The premise was deceptively simple. Abramović announced that she would stood absolutely still for the next 6 hours. In front of her, a table was covered with objects and instructions for how they could be used.
The instructions read:
Instructions
There are 72 objects on the table that one can use on me as desired.
Performance
I am the object.
During this period I take full responsibility.
Duration: 6 hours (8 pm – 2 am)
The items on the table were described as being “objects of pleasure” and “objects of destruction.” Included among them were a rose, feather, perfume, honey, bread, grapes, wine, scissors, a scalpel, nails, a metal bar, and a gun loaded with one bullet.
When the performance first began, people were tentative and shy, and it seemed as though no one might interact with her at all. Which makes sense, right? She might have labeled herself as an object, but in reality, she was still a person. Eventually people got interesting and involved and got the hang of things. Marina was their object, so they moved her position. They poured water on her. They wrapped her up in string.
A simple series of minor humiliations, right?
Before long, however, things took a dark and disturbing turn. Someone touched her intimately. One man cut her neck with the razor blade and drank some of her blood. By the third hour her clothes had been cut from her body. She was groped again and sexually assaulted by more than one person. They carried her through the room half-naked, placed her on a table, and stabbed a knife into the wood between her legs.
At one point, someone put the loaded gun in her own hand and positioned her arm to hold it against her throat.
While Abramović wouldn’t call it off, fortunately another person present intervened as someone moved the artist’s own finger to the trigger.
When the six hours ended and it was announced that the performance was over.
As she walked through the crowd, not one person who had made use of her and the other objects she’d displayed would look at her, speak with her, or interact with her.
Talking about the performance later, Abramović remarked, “This work reveals something terrible about humanity. It shows how fast a person can hurt you under favorable circumstances. It shows how easy it is to dehumanize a person who does not fight, who does not defend himself. It shows that if he provides the stage, the majority of ‘normal’ people, apparently can become truly violent.”
And in 2015 she stated further that under only slightly different circumstances, things could have gone differently.
“They didn’t rape me,” she said, “because they were with their wives.”
This piece of performance art may be 40 years old, but it feels as relevant today as it was when Abramović first performed it in Naples, Italy, in 1974.
Today, following the rise of the MeToo Movement, more and more women are breaking their silence to speak out about
times their bodies were used without their consent in a way that made them feel less than, used in a way that made them feel like objects.
Many people have a hard time believing that so many nightmarish stories could possibly be true.
Who would treat another person that way? It’s a question women have been hearing far too often.
The answer is one that no one likes facing head on. Humans could. WE could. Give us some space in which we can be terrible and we may just take you up on it.
The real question should be this: If we are challenged to be great, can we, will we, do that just as readily by our free will?
Rebecca Jane Stokes is a sex,
humor and lifestyle writer living in Brooklyn, New York with her cat, Batman.
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