A woman stands completely still. Beside her is a long table covered by a white tablecloth and an assortment of items – among them flowers, lipstick, a brush, a fork, a scalpel and a gun. A note reads: “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.” Over six hours on a single day in 1974, Belgrade-born, New York-based artist Marina Abramović (b. 1946) performed this piece, titled Rhythm 0, at Studio Morra in Naples. It was an artwork but also an experiment to see how far the public would go. Ultimately, it led Abramović – who still has the scars – to state that “in your own performances you can go very far, but if you leave decisions to the public, you can be killed.” (Susie Hodge, ArtQuake, 2022).

Over the past four decades, performance art has shifted from the margins towards the mainstream. There are now a network of major festivals dedicated to live art internationally, with the UK hosting Fierce in Birmingham and SPILL in Ipswich. In 2010 the Museum of Modern Art, New York, staged a major Abramović career retrospective, which saw the artist perform The Artist is Present for 736 hours and 30 minutes, sitting silently at a table whilst visitors took turns to sit opposite her. Over nearly three months, she met the gaze of 1,000 strangers. Later, a 2012 documentary would bring the piece to a wider audience.

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