The performances were very trying and physically exhaustive, they involved the physical and mental concentration of the artist, and they included Gina Pane's Self-Portraits that required lying on a bed frame suspended over a grid of lit candles and Vito Acconci's 1972 performance in which he masturbated under the floorboards of a gallery as visitors walked overhead. It is argued that she re-performed these works so as to pay her respect to the past, though many of the performances were altered from their originals.
She was using a razor blade to cut the first line of a five-pointed star drawn on her stomach. The place was packed. Abramovic, naked, was installed on a round platform in the middle of the rotunda. Spectators filled the floor in front of her and lined the first few spirals of the museum's ramp, with a scattering higher up. Although one could safely assume that those on the floor had come to see Abramovic, at least some of the others must have been caught on their descent from the museum's concurrent Russia! exhibit.
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