Performance Art Object #72

Note: This story contains the themes of physical and sexual violence.

ENTRY ONE~

I was still.

I wasn’t inert, and certainly not forgotten. But I was kept. In the hush of a drawer where I was held, nothing changed and nothing needed to.

The touch I received hadn’t carried the weight of intention.

Then, I was lifted.

Without spectacle or ceremony, or even sound. A hand found me, weighed me, turned me and twisted me in its fingers as though memory could be traced into me. I didn’t know how long I had waited. And I also didn’t know if I had waited at all.

What I knew was I was selected.

Not for speed. Not for force. Not for fire.

The hand didn’t carry that. While I didn’t know everything, of one thing I was certain.

I was chosen to be present.

It was a strange kind of knowing. While I had the conviction, I didn’t yet know what that meant.

They placed me among others. Seventy-one companions.

Among us were a glass for wine, a razor blade, a bar of soap. There was a whip and a rose.

A feather. A chain. A hammer. A mirror. A polaroid.

Some shone, reflecting light like I did. Others flickered. Some wilted. Some slept.

So many alike. So many unlike. I didn’t know all the words for all the difference. I didn’t know the many names of pain or pleasure. But I knew I was not alone.

They cleaned me, polishing me until I gleamed. It didn’t change me, but it made the air feel different. As if I had become visible. As if I had been readied for something. I couldn’t name what, and I couldn’t name how that made me feel. The weight carried presence, existence, but not yet essence.

Then they wrapped me in cloth and carried me forward.

There was no voice, but I felt intention pass over me — a weightless thing, like breath withheld.

I wasn’t sharp. I wasn’t soft. I wasn’t warm. I wasn’t waiting.

I was.

But now I was chosen.

ENTRY TWO~

I was unwrapped.

Light touched me before hands did. It was different, all-encompassing, wider and hungrier light than before. It was somehow both taller and wider, and certainly watching.

I had been carried in cloth, but laid down bare.

The table was long and covered in something white that was not soft. The air held warmth, but not comfort. There were voices around. They were hurried, but not anxious. It was the hurry of preparation.

I was not the first to the table. Others had arrived before me.

A feather, candle, blade, grape, chain, mirror. They had found a position on the white-covered table before I did.

We were laid in rows. Not by size or by kind. I couldn’t feel any pattern in our placement.

There were seventy-two of us.

As before, some glistened, some wilted. Some clinked when touched. Others had scent.

I had none.

I was placed near the object that holds me. The one with a chamber for me. It waited. I didn’t know why. I just knew.

It was shaped to pull.

I didn’t know what it meant to be close. But I was close.

She entered.

Stillness came with her.

She didn’t look at me, but I felt seen. I wasn’t seen by eyes. Not of humans. By absence.

She stood in the center, like something meant to be left alone. But wasn’t.

And then she spoke. She didn’t direct it to me. But I heard.

“There are six hours. You may do as you wish. I will not resist.”

I didn’t know the meaning of wish. I didn’t know what it was to resist.

I didn’t know what I was.

But I was near the thing that might use me.

And I hadn’t been told anything.

ENTRY THREE

I write to do my best to report what happened throughout the night and into morning.

HOUR ONE.

She did not move.

The others did. Slowly, at first. One touched the feather. Another took the grape, then placed it back. A hand lifted the rose, then let the petals fall.

The metal hand had hovered near me before changing its mind.

The air around the table shifted. It somehow heavied and slowed down. I didn’t know what that meant, but I knew it wasn’t a thing air was meant to do. And yet, it did.

She stood in stillness that was not sleep nor surrender.

Stillness that was aware and intentional. I didn’t know what resistance meant.

No one touched the weapon.

No one touched me.

But the silence had begun to change its shape.

HOUR TWO.

Someone pressed the blade to her arm. The placement didn’t carry full force. Just enough to know pain.

Another smeared color on her face. The color was red, but it was not blood. A third tied string around her wrist, tight.

Her body received it all. Without sound. Without change.

I was shifted by the movement of my companions. I wasn’t lifted or chosen. A hand had brushed too close and nudged the table’s edge. I rolled. Half an inch. Closer to the one that might use me.

Closer to knowing, but not yet knowing.

I wasn’t sharp. I wasn’t warm.

But I remembered the one I had rolled beside.

I didn’t yet know what I was.

But I felt I was not safe.

HOUR THREE

The weapon was touched.

Not used. Not aimed. But held, weighed. It was admired, though the admiration was veiled in curiosity.

Then I was lifted with it.

A hand brought us together. We weren’t joined, but we were aligned. My shape was studied beside the curve of the barrel. Then I was returned to the table, not where I had been.

Now I was crooked. I lay on my side.

The air stiffened. Silence held. The laughter from before was gone.

She remained still.

But the shape of waiting was changing. To what was yet to be determined.

I still did not know what I was.

I began to suspect I might be different than the rest in ways words didn’t hold.

HOUR FOUR

They cut her shirt. Like paper. Flimsy. Without resistance, which was a word I still didn’t understand.

Her breasts were exposed. A slow violence. A quiet one.

She bled, but not much at first. Thin places. Small.

The blade was used to explore her skin.

Her throat was slashed at, though not yet in the violence that carries finality. Her blood was licked from her bleeding body.

No one touched the grapes.

I was turned. A thumb pressed against me. Not to pick me up, but to know me.

Then I was brought again to the weapon.

Not inserted, but placed along its spine.

Measured in space and size. Perhaps, measured in violence. I wondered, though briefly, if I was the violence that would bring finality.

My side touched the trigger. Lightly. I didn’t know if I was used to test its weight or its consequence.

I did not know what they were measuring.

But I felt the cold of the steel reflect back through me.

HOUR FIVE

I was lifted.

Held.

Loaded.

I slid into the chamber with a sound no one noticed but me. The click was loud. The sliding of metal softly into another metal place was a sound only for me.

The weapon closed.

The room shifted. As if all the air had been sucked out by a vacuum.

They took her hand. Moved it to the grip.

They placed her finger — her own — onto the trigger.

She did not pull.

Some urged. Some cried.

But I was in the place I had been made to be. And she was part of it now.

We were a single shape.

She did not move. But everyone else did. At first it was only their eyes.

We were near something. Perhaps I was the violence of finality.

I did not know the word for what I was.

But I knew I was almost it.

HOUR SIX

She swayed. Once. A tremor like a held note. Then steadied.

He — the one who had placed her finger — gave the weapon back.

Slowly. After much resistance.

Someone opened it. Unloaded me. I was removed. Laid again on the table. My surface colder than before.

I did not know what hatred was, but it was possible I was that.

No one laughed.

The room changed.

Then broke.

She moved. It had been planned prior. The six hours had ended.

Without further warning, she stepped forward.

Not toward the table but toward them.

And they ran.

Not all at once, but fast. As if the stillness had finally ended, and they had not known what it would release.

She remained.

She had not spoken again.

But the silence around her was gone.

ENTRY FOUR~

After

I had been touched.

The table was bare. The cloth was gone. The light was colder now. Brighter, but not warmer. It reached me without hesitation.

There was no one here.

Not her. Not the ones who had watched. Not the hands that had lifted. Not the voice that had said:

“I will not resist.”

I did not know what she had meant. But I had not forgotten the sound of it. I did not know what resistance was. I knew that I had been where I was created to be. And she had been there, too.

I was returned to stillness, but it was not the same stillness I had known before.

This stillness was louder. More alone.

The others were gone.

The feather. The rose. The blade.

The thing that held me.

Gone.

Only I remained.

I remembered where I had been placed. Her finger around the trigger. The chamber around my body.

I remembered being part of something. Briefly. Not hers. Not mine.

But shared.

I had not been used.

I was not, but I had almost been.

That nearness had marked me.

I was not sharp. I was not soft. I was not warm.

But I might be harm.

I did not know what I had been made for.

I did not know if I had been chosen for pain, or for the idea of it.

I did know I was not hatred, but something close to it. Maybe something that held it.

Perhaps I was fear.

But I knew this: I had been there.

She had moved. They had fled. And I had remained.

The room still held the heat of that moment, faint and fading.

Like breath once held.

I was not waiting.

I was still.

But I was no longer untouched.

And I did not know what a boundary was.

Author’s Note:

This piece is a fictional account inspired by Rhythm 0, a six-hour performance by Marina Abramović in 1974. In the performance, Abramović stood passive before an audience, offering them 72 objects, some symbols of comfort, others of pain or violence, and declared that they could use them on her however they wished. She would not resist. What followed was an unfolding of human behavior, power, and the limits of consent.

This story imagines the event from the point of view of a single object: a bullet.