What level of respect should a person place on sharing or protecting the private personal lives of themselves and others? Should telling stories and descriptions of your friends to strangers be acceptable? How does the presence of others affect your emotions and decisions? Through the works of Marina Abramović and The Address Book by Sophie Calle, we learn how people deal with attempts at making the private sphere public. The premise of The Address Book itself challenges the privacy of personal spheres. Instead of simply returning the address book to its owner without any other actions, Calle decides to learn about the owner by meeting the people listed in his address book. Through her conversations with them, she hopes to identify and discover …show more content…
In Rhythm 0, she places seventy-two items on a table, such as a feather, a gun, a razor blade, a bullet, and a perfume bottle, and invites the audience to use the objects in any way they desired (Phelan 2). After three hours, the audience had cut off all of her clothes and scraped off parts of her flesh. Later, someone placed a loaded gun in Abramović’s hand and forced it against her head. At this point, Paul Schimmel noted that the audience had been divided into two groups, protectors and instigators (2). Although she planned to do the performance from 8 PM to 2 AM, the protective members of the audience requested to end the performance because they felt that the crowd became too violent and Abramović’s safety was in danger (2). While Rhythm 0 focused on the body, The Artist is Present concentrated on people’s emotions. During this performance, held at the Museum of Modern Art, people would sit directly across from Abramović and gaze at her for as long as they pleased. Fascinatingly many of those who partook in the performance became overwhelmed with emotion and were brought to tears. Although all they were doing was looking at Abramović, some power induced them into an intense emotional