Here is Marina Abramović asking to be treated as an object, her audience provided with a hammer, a saw, chains, a whip and other frightening implements to do what they want with her.
And here she is wearing a doctor’s white coat as she tells us a story “about how we, in Balkans, kill the rats …”, as she embarks on a blood-curdling video lecture as part of her 1997 Balkan Baroque at the Venice Biennale, at the height of the Yugoslav civil wars. I remember it from then as one of the most gruelling and moving performances I have ever seen.
