In 1974, Marina Abramovic informed visitors that she would remain motionless for six hours, regardless of their actions. She placed 72 items on a table within reach, allowing visitors to use them to either please or harm her. The performance encouraged participants to interact with the items as they saw fit. These included a rose, feather, perfume, honey, bread, grapes, wine, scissors, a scalpel, nails, a metal bar, a gun, and a bullet.
Famed actor Arnold Schwarzenegger posted a photo of him sleeping on the street under his famous bronze statue, and sadly wrote "how times have changed" . The reason he wrote the phrase was not only because he was old, but because when he was governor of California he inaugurated a hotel with his statue. Hotel staff told Arnold, "at any moment you can come and we’ll have a room reserved for you." . When Arnold stepped down as governor and went to the hotel, the administration refused to give him a room arguing that he should pay for it, since they were in great demand . He brought a sleeping bag and stood underneath the statue and explained what he wanted to convey: "When I was in an important position, they always complimented me, and when I lost this position, they forgot about me and did not keep their promise. Do not trust your position or the amount of money you have, nor your power, nor your intelligence, it will not last. " . Trying to teach everyone that when you're "Important" in people's eyes , everyone is your "Friend" But once you don't benefit their interests , you won't matter anymore. According to Arnold, "Nothing lasts forever"...
@Morbidful How does this pic from 1974 look better than pictures from android phones in 2024?
@Morbidful I'd just take the table cloth and wrap it around her. I don't know how people lack the inhibition to abuse a passive, harmless person for no reason.
@Morbidful In 2010 at MOMA, Marina Abramović sat silently as people took turns sitting in a chair & locking eyes with her. 3 months, 8 hours a day, with 1,000 strangers. Including a surprise from visit from Ulay, her former lover & collaborator.
As Abramović described it later: "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." Rhythm 0 ranked ninth on a Complex list of the greatest works of performance art ever done.
Rhythm 0 was a six-hour work of performance art by Serbian artist Marina Abramović in Naples in 1974.[1] The work involved Abramović standing still while the audience was invited to do to her whatever they wished, using one of 72 objects she had placed on a table. These included a rose, feather, perfume, honey, bread, grapes, wine, scissors, a scalpel, nails, a metal bar, a gun, and a bullet. Picture in 2012
@Morbidful One of Marina Abramović’s best known works is Rhythm 0, where she placed 72 objects – including a gun, a rose & a scalpel – on a table, and permitted the audience to manipulate her and use the objects without consequence, for six hours.
The Nth Country Experiment:: In the 1960s, amidst the escalating tensions of the Cold War, the United States embarked on a unique and ambitious project known as the Nth Country Experiment. The primary objective of this experiment was to ascertain whether a small group of scientifically competent individuals, without any specific education on nuclear weapons, could design a functional nuclear bomb using only publicly available information. The experiment was conceived in an era when the United States and the Soviet Union were the primary nuclear powers, and the fear of nuclear proliferation was mounting. The U.S. military hoped that if the instructions for building a nuclear bomb could be kept secret, proliferation to a fifth country, a sixth country, or an “Nth country” could be averted. The U.S. selected three young physics students who had recently completed their PhDs but had no specific education on nuclear weapons. These individuals were Dave Dobson, Bob Selden, and David Pipkorn. Armed with nothing more than a notebook, a library card, and their intellect, Dobson and Selden set out to design a nuclear bomb. They were ironically aided by information published as part of President Dwight Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” program. The duo had to decide whether to design a gun-style bomb, similar to the one dropped on Hiroshima. In 1967, just three years after the experiment began, Dobson and Selden presented the officials of the Nth Country Experiment with a design for a working atomic bomb. The established bomb designers agreed that the design was functional, albeit a bit over-complicated.
@Morbidful Marina Abramovi The Artist is Present Trailer (2012) Documentary