One of Beograd’s Many Angels
In the infamous Rhythm 0 piece, she delved deeper into the uncharted territory between audience and performer, resulting in arguably her most emotionally demanding but also best-known performance. She assigned to herself a passive role, with the public reaction to it being the artwork in itself. She placed a totality of 72 different objects on a table afore her: objects of potential pleasure; of potential harm; of potential murder. She then informed the people that for 6 full hours she would remain passive and indifferent to whatever the audience would do to her. The objects included a rose, a feather, honey, a whip, scissors, scalpels and even a gun loaded with one bullet. Initially, the audience reacted with caution, but as time went on, and the performer’s attitude remained passive and indifferent, people began to act as they pleased upon her body. She later commented:
“What I learned was that… if you leave it up to the audience, they can kill you. I felt really violated: they cut up my clothes, stuck rose thorns in my stomach, one person aimed the gun at my head, and another took it away. It created an aggressive atmosphere. After exactly 6 hours, as planned, I stood up and started walking toward the audience. Everyone ran away, to escape an actual confrontation.”'
That was, in itself, the artwork.
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