As a performance artist myself, I think there is definitely an aspect of "the audience should hurt me a little bit, or at the very least threaten harm". Why are people fascinated with fire breathers, motorcycle jumpers, escape artists, etc? It's the thrill of risk.
Even without knowledge of her or her works, there's a lot of context that says "the risk is the point".
By putting harmful items out on the table, she made a deliberate choice for risk to be involved. The audience knows this. They know if she wanted a "safe" performance, she would have limited her selection. If the worst items were glue and feathers, the implied worse outcome is making her look like a chicken. Embarrassing, but not a huge harm. She put out a gun and a bullet. That implies (but does not outright verbatim say) that the sky is the limit - shooting me is an acceptable outcome.
That establishes the conceptual limit, but there are still societal shackles on behavior. Which is where "it's all about the risk" comes in. More risk = more sensational news, more notoriety for the artist. Clearly she wants something crazy to happen, else she would not put herself in a crazy position. So the audience starts pushing the limits of what is acceptable. I don't think they are harming her out of a direct desire to cause her harm, per se (might be some sadists in the audience), but there is an expectation that the risk level should ratchet up. But that ratchet doesn't occur without audience participation.
I think this perspective actually tempers the "this piece shows all humans are terrible sadists deep down" interpretation. Just like the Milgram experiments, it boils down to the general principle of humans tending to do the thing they think is expected of them.
Even without knowledge of her or her works, there's a lot of context that says "the risk is the point".
By putting harmful items out on the table, she made a deliberate choice for risk to be involved. The audience knows this. They know if she wanted a "safe" performance, she would have limited her selection. If the worst items were glue and feathers, the implied worse outcome is making her look like a chicken. Embarrassing, but not a huge harm. She put out a gun and a bullet. That implies (but does not outright verbatim say) that the sky is the limit - shooting me is an acceptable outcome.
That establishes the conceptual limit, but there are still societal shackles on behavior. Which is where "it's all about the risk" comes in. More risk = more sensational news, more notoriety for the artist. Clearly she wants something crazy to happen, else she would not put herself in a crazy position. So the audience starts pushing the limits of what is acceptable. I don't think they are harming her out of a direct desire to cause her harm, per se (might be some sadists in the audience), but there is an expectation that the risk level should ratchet up. But that ratchet doesn't occur without audience participation.
I think this perspective actually tempers the "this piece shows all humans are terrible sadists deep down" interpretation. Just like the Milgram experiments, it boils down to the general principle of humans tending to do the thing they think is expected of them.