Marina Abramović staged an extreme, two-month long art piece in New York, and something very surprising happened
An artist who took part in one of the most gruelling performance art pieces in history had something unexpected happen to her during another extreme performance decades later.
You may have heard of the artist Marina Abramović, who once famously put on the ‘Rhythm 0’ performance where she placed 72 objects on a table and let strangers use them on her however they liked for six hours.
She said she was ‘ready to die’ as part of the 1974 display and would take full responsibility for anything that happened to her.
The objects ranged from flowers and perfume to weapons, and at first people handed her the flowers or just watched her as she stood still.
As the performance went on, the public’s actions became more extreme, leaving the artist in tears (Marina Abramović Institute/YouTube)
However, by the end of the six hours she’d been stripped of her clothing and her skin had been slashed.
At one point, a fight had broken out among the audience after a loaded gun was put to her head and her own finger was put on the trigger.
Despite what she’d been put through by people as part of ‘Rhythm 0’, she was committed to continuing performance art, and at one of her shows in 2010 something happened which she definitely didn’t expect.
She spent over two months sitting and having silent conversations with anyone who joined her. (Museum of Modern Art)
During performance piece ‘The Artist is Present’, she spent two-and-a-half months sitting at a table in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City with an empty chair across from her.
Anyone could sit down and have a ‘silent conversation’ with Marina as they were instructed not to touch her or speak to her, and among those who did were a number of famous faces including the actor Alan Rickman.
To sit there for hours on end and not speak to anyone for over two months was quite the extreme act, but many found the experience very affecting.
The ‘don’t touch, don’t talk’ rules were broken by one of the earliest guests, a man named Frank Uwe Laysiepen (better known as Ulay), but that’s because he had formerly been in a relationship with Marina.
They hadn’t spoken for over 20 years before this point and she didn’t know he would be one of the first to sit across from her, but the footage of their reunion went viral as they said a lot without speaking before she leaned across the table and offered her hands to hold.
One of the first people to sit with her was her former partner in art and life. (Museum of Modern Art)
For context, Marina and Ulay met in 1975 a year after she’d done ‘Rhythm 0’ and they started performing together, between 1976 and 1988 they were also in a relationship.
The relationship ended up on rocky terms and the two of them parted ways under extraordinary circumstances.
They split after performing something called ‘The Lovers’, where they’d walk from opposite ends of the Great Wall of China and meet in the middle to be married.
However, according to AnOther it took them eight years to get permission from the Chinese government, by which time their relationship was falling apart.
They still pressed on with the performance, each walking more than 3,700 miles to meet each other, sometimes having to clamber over the rocky ruins where parts of the wall had fallen into disrepair.
When Marina met Ulay, he told her he’d got the translator who accompanied him pregnant along the way.
Abramović told Ulay he should marry his translator instead, then they hugged and parted ways.
While they reunited briefly in 2010 for ‘The Artist is Present’, Ulay later sued Abramović over claims she hadn’t paid him enough royalties from their joint artwork, and in 2016 a court ordered her to pay him €250,000 (£209,000) in royalties and €23,000 (£19,000) in legal costs.
Featured Image Credit: YouTube / Isidora Smiljkovic
