If you walk into the Royal Academy in London today, you’ll be confronted by a table. Set up like an altar, and draped in a white cloth, it has on it 69 objects. Some are associated with pleasure – a glass, a candle, a rose, a hairbrush, a mirror, a comb, a lipstick. Others administer pain – a gun, a bullet, chains, an axe, a saw, an array of sharp knives.
In 1974, Marina Abramović dared an audience to use chains, lipstick and knives on her body – and their willingness to abuse her revealed frightening truths about misogyny
It’s from Rhythm 0, a performance art piece by Marina Abramović – who has become the first woman to have a solo exhibition in all of the museum’s main galleries (they have been open since 1768). First performed in Naples in 1974, the work saw Abramović declare herself as the object. She then instructed the audience to use the props on her as they wished.
The performance lasted six hours. At first, her audience was passive. But, as time went on, they turned violent, with people using the objects to cut into her skin, rip her clothes, stick a knife between her legs, and attach a piece of paper to her body that read “VILE”. Surrounding the table at the RA, there are photographs of the performance. They show – predominantly – men playing with the objects, touching Abramović’s body, ogling and laughing at her with their friends, as she stands there alone, tears filling her eyes.
While the photographs made me feel discomfort and anguish, seeing the vast table hit even harder. It’s a monument not just to Abramović’s fearlessness and resilience, the way she tested her mental and physical pain thresholds to extremes, but also to her trust in the audience. A number of her other performance pieces have been recreated with younger artists, but Rhythm 0 has not. I doubt it would be allowed, which leads me to question – can we still not trust people when they are placed in a position of power?
The work is part of a larger series of Rhythms constructed in the early 1970s that look at the concept of control. The performances draw on Abramović’s strict upbringing in postwar Yugoslavia, raised by parents who were high-ranking officials in the socialist government. “I grew up with incredible control, discipline and violence at home. Everything was extreme,” she has said. The Rhythms explore the tightening of rules in an authoritarian society, but also what it is like to be a woman in a deeply misogynist culture.
Fast forward to today, and Rhythm 0 makes us think about the hostility women still face: the constant threat of violence and danger, and the abuse of our bodies by the powerful. Take the Russell Brand sexual allegations, or the news that in the Metropolitan police, an authority that we trust to protect us and patrol our streets, there are 143 officers currently under investigation for domestic abuse, of whom 42 are still working.
We hear such stories so frequently that we can become numbed to them, not fully comprehending the reality of what the victims endure. As a longtime follower of Abramović, I had become used to the images of Rhythm 0. But after witnessing the table, I had a visceral sense of what she put herself through; the terror of having your body violated.
As some of the reviews of her RA show revealed, Abramović’s performance art practice still invites scepticism, even disgust – reactions to which she is long accustomed. She told me: “When I started in the early 70s, everyone said we were crazy. ‘This is not art, it’s nothing.’” By using the body as her medium, Abramović shows just how close art can get to life. As spectators of her work, we are also implicated in the reality of what people endure. Rhythm 0 is a shattering reminder of the people who live in fear of abuse daily.
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