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Comment by cal85 | Hacker News Reader

Even if it isn't 'scripted', there's an implied script in the objects laid on the table and the general presentation as a piece of interactive art where the audience is requested to participate by doing 'anything' to her and she won't react. They were being asked, implicitly, to break norms, to treat her as non-human, to get all weird in the name of Art.

The idea that this says something profound about how people will 'naturally gravitate' towards violent or dehumanising behaviour is ridiculous.

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> where the audience is requested to participate by doing 'anything' to her and she won't react

Just to be 100% clear, she never asked people to "do anything" nor "I won't react", this is what was said to the audience/participants:

    Instructions:
    There are 72 objects on the table that one can use on me as desired.
    Performance.
    I am the object.
    During this period I take full responsibility.

    Duration: 6 hours (8 pm – 2 am).[6]

Those instructions strongly imply "do anything". As for "I won't react", that's obvious from the first moment someone does something to her (like moving her arms) and she just goes along with it. From then on, it becomes obbvious that it's a game, a kind of endurance test for the artist, with the audience trying increasingly extreme things to see if she really will keep going along with it.

(And of course, at any moment she could just say "OK that's enough, I'm stopping this early, please stop" and it would be over - it's not like everyone would say "Nah, we are going to keep abusing you until 2am as originally agreed".)

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