8 ms·

It sure ain't Bach. She succeeded against a self imposed constraint of her anxiety and baited needy and damaged people to reveal their own perversions. What a c

It sure ain't Bach. She succeeded against a self imposed constraint of her anxiety and baited needy and damaged people to reveal their own perversions. What a circle jerk. Demonstrations of human capacity for ugliness are a lot easier than revealing something beautiful. I've met a few people over the years who set themselves up to be victimized so that they could feel justified in their own malice toward the world, and it's a banal psychological trope you'd think people wouldn't fall for. A lot of conceptual and performance art to me is just sickness. The only thing that makes her interesting as a phenomena is how she appears as an enabler and convener in the orbit of some cunning and opportunistic men whose nihilism she would seem to validate for them. When you see our purpose as being to renew life and thrive, to me this kind of worship of consuming material experiences that Abramovic is known for is a spiritual poverty.

garciasn 3y ago
I mean, I know nothing more about the piece than what I've just read, but wow, that's a take and a half. I just cannot fathom viewing what she attempted the way you did. If anything, it offered the opportunity for humanity to reveal something beautiful, but instead, the audience took the opposite opportunity--something I honestly feel you have done here, but in words, which I almost felt as thorns in my bellybutton.
- burkaman 3y ago
  Agreed, that is one of the worst comments I've ever seen on HN. I am usually able to understand and empathize with opinions I disagree with, but that comment is just incomprehensible. I guess that's the point of the piece? I don't know if I would have been exposed to a worldview so opposite to mine if we didn't have this artwork to discuss.
- shwaj 3y ago
  There’s another anecdotal comment where someone heard that the audience was too tame, and some time into the performance they were prompted/goaded into interacting in more controversial ways, otherwise the performance would have been a dud. If this is true, then it tends to support the GP post’s take: there was an intention to bring out the worst, not a neutral attempt to see what would happen.
  - rcoveson 3y ago
    Even if we disregard the anecdote, we can at least infer that the intention was to make an original, evocative piece of performance art. How does that implied goal cause people to act? Like a bunch of avant-garde nutjobs, maybe?
  - burkaman 3y ago
    Were you able to find anything backing that up? I wasn't, and this is a very famous and thoroughly analyzed piece of art. Given the lack of evidence I'm leaning towards not believing that anonymous third-hand account.
- rcoveson 3y ago
  If she wanted to see people acting beautifully, she would have performed it at a soup kitchen, or a temple. Or even just in a little cul-de-sac in an average neighborhood where people know each other and kids are present. Everyday places full of totally average people who aren't used to twisting their minds into scenarios on the ninth meta-level above reality. All she succeeded in showing is that her audience is full of people obsessed with the ugliness of humanity.
jakelazaroff 3y ago
Honestly flabbergasted by your reply. How did she bait anyone? How did she set herself up to be victimized? People could have just… not been violent. That would have been an entirely plausible outcome, yet here we are.
- stouset 3y ago
  “She shouldn’t have been wearing those kinds of clothes if she didn’t want that to happen.”
  - ADcorpo 3y ago
    Thank you for this comment, I had a hard time pinpointing exactly what made me feel uneasy about all those answers justifying the audience behavior or explaining that they were setup for violence because various harmful objects were present. It is indeed the same way of thinking. If you murder someone, I don't see how you could blame them for being too close to a knife or gun. Having the opportunity to do something does not systematically justify doing it. edit: this logic does not apply even if the person brought the harmful object with them, the decision to do the harm is ultimately not made by the victim.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- peoplefromibiza 3y ago
  > People could have just… not been violent In Naples...? https://www-ilmattino-it.translate.goog/napoli/cronaca/sparatoria_a_napoli_oggi_ultime_notizie_pallonetto_santa_lucia-7604790.html?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=it&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://www-ilmattino-it.translate.goog/napoli/cronaca/spara... https://www-napolivillage-com.translate.goog/cronaca/allarenaccia-i-centauri-delle-baby-gang-tengono-in-ostaggio-i-residenti-e-si-fanno-beffe-della-polizia/?_x_tr_sl=it&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=it&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://www-napolivillage-com.translate.goog/cronaca/allaren...
  - bergen 3y ago
bergen 3y ago
What a take. How is she exactly to blame for the way this turned out? She set the stage for SOMETHING to happen, wether good or bad things happened was completely up to the audience. To see this and say "this is sickness" and "she invited people to harm here" is baffling. You seem extremely judgemental.
- GuB-42 3y ago
  She has already performed acts of violence on herself. Acts a good part of her audience most likely has seen and appreciated, why would they go see her otherwise? And among the items were weapons and other instruments of pain. The name "rhythm 0" follows the same pattern as her other performances that involved self-harm. So yes, I consider it an invitation to harm her.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
civilized 3y ago
I don't fully agree with this comment, but some repliers here would benefit from additional context. Here is the table of materials Marina provided to be used on her: https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2022/women-artists/rhythm-0 https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2022/women-artists/r... At least two thirds of the table is covered in various instruments of harm. What does that say to the viewer? I think "baiting needy and damaged people to reveal their own perversions" is a fair characterization, although it may not be a complete one.
- bondarchuk 3y ago
  Oh well it quite changes my view of events that she herself provided the loaded gun. I did not read the wiki article that way.
- burkaman 3y ago
  > What does that say to the viewer? I am interested in your answer to this question. My answer would not be "oh she must want us to hurt her with those". When I visit someone's house and they have a decorative hunting rifle hanging on the wall, I don't assume that they want me to shoot them with it. I'm sure there are a thousand different interpretations of that table, one would be that she's pointing out how everyone is as vulnerable as she is, just less visibly. Everything on that table is an object that anyone can easily acquire and walk around with (and use). I have no idea, but "please attack me" would be my absolute last thought. I understand there were suggestive instructions, but it's a piece of art produced by a human being. Nirvana has a song called "rape me", what does that say to the listener? Do you think it is meant to say "please rape the members of this band"?
  - skrebbel 3y ago
    A table with a eg handsaw “that one can use on me as desired” is very different from a hunting rifle on a wall. The sign explicitly encourages people to use the items on the artist. It’s really not far off from literally spelling out “please attack me”. Of course that doesn't excuse people who do so in any way, they’re still the perpetrator. But I think your hunting rifle comparison isn’t very good.
GuB-42 3y ago
> Demonstrations of human capacity for ugliness are a lot easier than revealing something beautiful. Not always. See that Acali experiement ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acali https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acali ). To make it short: An experimenter took a bunch of people, put them a raft expecting sex and violence, instead, they became best friends.
popcorncowboy 3y ago
"..scissors, a scalpel, nails, a metal bar, a gun, and a bullet" The naivety in some of the responses to your take surprise me. If you walked into the centre of London, Sydney or NYC, setup a table which included these objects and invited the public to do whatever they wanted to you, the general outcome is fairly predictable. And the protagonists can present the profundity of their scene as insight and call it art. So, bravo them.
- skipants 3y ago
  I agree. And something overlooked is that Rythym 0 isn't an incitement for good people to do something bad; it's inciting good people to leave. If good people pick up the roses and bad people pick up the guns, why would the good people want to stay in that environment?
itishappy 3y ago
Maybe it was about more than just her?
airstrike 3y ago
> Demonstrations of human capacity for ugliness are a lot easier than revealing something beautiful. This almost seems like an obvious truth but most people seem oblivious to it. In the general case, I like to say that "destroying is much easier than creating". Sadly, for decades now, most of art (and society) has been more about the former than the latter. If anyone reading this has sources, essays, articles, books to suggest to me that touch on this issue, I am all ears
dang 3y ago
Ok, but please don't fulminate or post in the flamewar style. We're trying for the opposite here, and you can make your substantive points without any of that. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- Tao3300 3y ago
  I don't agree with the commentator, but I think with extreme pieces like this any and all interpretations are on the table. Challenging and disruptive things aren't always handled eloquently or reasonably, otherwise they wouldn't be challenging and disruptive. Consider reactions you'd rather not see here as extensions of regrettable behaviors in the performance of the piece. In other words, did 'Rhythm 0' ever really end, or are we all in it? This is a terrible place to talk about art. We probably should avoid it entirely because the flamewars are inevitable.
  - pvg 3y ago
    The idea is to discuss provocative things without getting provoked to sputtering grumpitude and if you can't help getting provoked to sputtering grumpitude, don't write it on HN. It's imperfect and limiting in a number of ways but it's not a particularly onerous or unreasonable constraint.
    - Tao3300 3y ago
      Exactly. To which I'd add, this is a topic that inevitably brings out sputtering grumpitude.
      - pvg 3y ago
        I don't think it is, nor do I think it makes any sense to deny forum users either agency or responsibility - you can choose not to sputter and if you do choose to sputter, it's not the fault of a wikipedia article.
- klyrs 3y ago

garciasn 3y ago

I mean, I know nothing more about the piece than what I've just read, but wow, that's a take and a half. I just cannot fathom viewing what she attempted the way you did. If anything, it offered the opportunity for humanity to reveal something beautiful, but instead, the audience took the opposite opportunity--something I honestly feel you have done here, but in words, which I almost felt as thorns in my bellybutton.

burkaman 3y ago
Agreed, that is one of the worst comments I've ever seen on HN. I am usually able to understand and empathize with opinions I disagree with, but that comment is just incomprehensible. I guess that's the point of the piece? I don't know if I would have been exposed to a worldview so opposite to mine if we didn't have this artwork to discuss.
shwaj 3y ago
There’s another anecdotal comment where someone heard that the audience was too tame, and some time into the performance they were prompted/goaded into interacting in more controversial ways, otherwise the performance would have been a dud. If this is true, then it tends to support the GP post’s take: there was an intention to bring out the worst, not a neutral attempt to see what would happen.
- rcoveson 3y ago
  Even if we disregard the anecdote, we can at least infer that the intention was to make an original, evocative piece of performance art. How does that implied goal cause people to act? Like a bunch of avant-garde nutjobs, maybe?
- burkaman 3y ago
  Were you able to find anything backing that up? I wasn't, and this is a very famous and thoroughly analyzed piece of art. Given the lack of evidence I'm leaning towards not believing that anonymous third-hand account.
rcoveson 3y ago
If she wanted to see people acting beautifully, she would have performed it at a soup kitchen, or a temple. Or even just in a little cul-de-sac in an average neighborhood where people know each other and kids are present. Everyday places full of totally average people who aren't used to twisting their minds into scenarios on the ninth meta-level above reality. All she succeeded in showing is that her audience is full of people obsessed with the ugliness of humanity.

jakelazaroff 3y ago

Honestly flabbergasted by your reply. How did she bait anyone? How did she set herself up to be victimized? People could have just… not been violent. That would have been an entirely plausible outcome, yet here we are.

stouset 3y ago
“She shouldn’t have been wearing those kinds of clothes if she didn’t want that to happen.”
- ADcorpo 3y ago
  Thank you for this comment, I had a hard time pinpointing exactly what made me feel uneasy about all those answers justifying the audience behavior or explaining that they were setup for violence because various harmful objects were present. It is indeed the same way of thinking. If you murder someone, I don't see how you could blame them for being too close to a knife or gun. Having the opportunity to do something does not systematically justify doing it. edit: this logic does not apply even if the person brought the harmful object with them, the decision to do the harm is ultimately not made by the victim.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
peoplefromibiza 3y ago
> People could have just… not been violent In Naples...? https://www-ilmattino-it.translate.goog/napoli/cronaca/sparatoria_a_napoli_oggi_ultime_notizie_pallonetto_santa_lucia-7604790.html?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=it&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://www-ilmattino-it.translate.goog/napoli/cronaca/spara... https://www-napolivillage-com.translate.goog/cronaca/allarenaccia-i-centauri-delle-baby-gang-tengono-in-ostaggio-i-residenti-e-si-fanno-beffe-della-polizia/?_x_tr_sl=it&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=it&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://www-napolivillage-com.translate.goog/cronaca/allaren...
- bergen 3y ago

bergen 3y ago

What a take. How is she exactly to blame for the way this turned out? She set the stage for SOMETHING to happen, wether good or bad things happened was completely up to the audience. To see this and say "this is sickness" and "she invited people to harm here" is baffling. You seem extremely judgemental.

GuB-42 3y ago
She has already performed acts of violence on herself. Acts a good part of her audience most likely has seen and appreciated, why would they go see her otherwise? And among the items were weapons and other instruments of pain. The name "rhythm 0" follows the same pattern as her other performances that involved self-harm. So yes, I consider it an invitation to harm her.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

civilized 3y ago

I don't fully agree with this comment, but some repliers here would benefit from additional context. Here is the table of materials Marina provided to be used on her: https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2022/women-artists/rhythm-0 https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2022/women-artists/r... At least two thirds of the table is covered in various instruments of harm. What does that say to the viewer? I think "baiting needy and damaged people to reveal their own perversions" is a fair characterization, although it may not be a complete one.

bondarchuk 3y ago
Oh well it quite changes my view of events that she herself provided the loaded gun. I did not read the wiki article that way.
burkaman 3y ago
> What does that say to the viewer? I am interested in your answer to this question. My answer would not be "oh she must want us to hurt her with those". When I visit someone's house and they have a decorative hunting rifle hanging on the wall, I don't assume that they want me to shoot them with it. I'm sure there are a thousand different interpretations of that table, one would be that she's pointing out how everyone is as vulnerable as she is, just less visibly. Everything on that table is an object that anyone can easily acquire and walk around with (and use). I have no idea, but "please attack me" would be my absolute last thought. I understand there were suggestive instructions, but it's a piece of art produced by a human being. Nirvana has a song called "rape me", what does that say to the listener? Do you think it is meant to say "please rape the members of this band"?
- skrebbel 3y ago
  A table with a eg handsaw “that one can use on me as desired” is very different from a hunting rifle on a wall. The sign explicitly encourages people to use the items on the artist. It’s really not far off from literally spelling out “please attack me”. Of course that doesn't excuse people who do so in any way, they’re still the perpetrator. But I think your hunting rifle comparison isn’t very good.

GuB-42 3y ago

> Demonstrations of human capacity for ugliness are a lot easier than revealing something beautiful. Not always. See that Acali experiement ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acali https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acali ). To make it short: An experimenter took a bunch of people, put them a raft expecting sex and violence, instead, they became best friends.

popcorncowboy 3y ago

"..scissors, a scalpel, nails, a metal bar, a gun, and a bullet" The naivety in some of the responses to your take surprise me. If you walked into the centre of London, Sydney or NYC, setup a table which included these objects and invited the public to do whatever they wanted to you, the general outcome is fairly predictable. And the protagonists can present the profundity of their scene as insight and call it art. So, bravo them.

skipants 3y ago
I agree. And something overlooked is that Rythym 0 isn't an incitement for good people to do something bad; it's inciting good people to leave. If good people pick up the roses and bad people pick up the guns, why would the good people want to stay in that environment?

itishappy 3y ago

Maybe it was about more than just her?

airstrike 3y ago

> Demonstrations of human capacity for ugliness are a lot easier than revealing something beautiful. This almost seems like an obvious truth but most people seem oblivious to it. In the general case, I like to say that "destroying is much easier than creating". Sadly, for decades now, most of art (and society) has been more about the former than the latter. If anyone reading this has sources, essays, articles, books to suggest to me that touch on this issue, I am all ears

dang 3y ago

Ok, but please don't fulminate or post in the flamewar style. We're trying for the opposite here, and you can make your substantive points without any of that. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Tao3300 3y ago
I don't agree with the commentator, but I think with extreme pieces like this any and all interpretations are on the table. Challenging and disruptive things aren't always handled eloquently or reasonably, otherwise they wouldn't be challenging and disruptive. Consider reactions you'd rather not see here as extensions of regrettable behaviors in the performance of the piece. In other words, did 'Rhythm 0' ever really end, or are we all in it? This is a terrible place to talk about art. We probably should avoid it entirely because the flamewars are inevitable.
- pvg 3y ago
  The idea is to discuss provocative things without getting provoked to sputtering grumpitude and if you can't help getting provoked to sputtering grumpitude, don't write it on HN. It's imperfect and limiting in a number of ways but it's not a particularly onerous or unreasonable constraint.
  - Tao3300 3y ago
    Exactly. To which I'd add, this is a topic that inevitably brings out sputtering grumpitude.
    - pvg 3y ago
      I don't think it is, nor do I think it makes any sense to deny forum users either agency or responsibility - you can choose not to sputter and if you do choose to sputter, it's not the fault of a wikipedia article.
klyrs 3y ago