The performances of Marina Abramović are characterized by the artist’s radical physical engagement. Not infrequently, her extreme self-experiments lead to life-threatening situations. In terms of art history, these works contributed decisively to the performative turn in the arts. Performance art, which emerged in the 1960s, was intended as a counter model to the established institutions like the theater and museum. It’s program was to brush aside all supposed certainties: the difference between artist and work, performer and character, actor and audience, as well as between art and life. In a celebration of the living moment, the performers’ living bodies became the site for negotiating identity politics, gender relations, and social norms.