Marina Abramovic. Free Interdisciplinary Performance Lab

With the first appointment of the outstanding performance artist Marina Abramovic to the Pina Bausch Professorship at the Folkwang University of the Arts, the focus in the 2023-23 academic year was placed on transdisciplinarity, artistic daring and social awareness. The project supervised by Abramovic, entitled "Free Interdisciplinary Performance Laboratory (FIPL)", was realised in a class put together by her, in which she brought together over 20 students from the fields of music (classical and jazz, instrumental, vocal and composition), dance, design, photography, (physical) theatre and directing. The students developed individual or collective concepts for performances and learnt how to develop a long-term performative work form in an experience-based process. In a workshop entitled "Cleaning the House", which was organised according to a method developed by Marina Abramovic method developed by Marina Abramovic, the students developed a sense of the presence required in performances, including the exploration of their individual physical and mental limits.The outstanding performance artist Marina Abramovic was the first holder of the new Pina Bausch Professorship at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen in 2022/23. She focused on transdisciplinarity, artistic daring and social awareness. In her Free Interdisciplinary Performance Laboratory (FIPL), Abramovic brought together over twenty students from the fields of music, dance, design, photography, (physical) theater and directing. Over two semesters, they realized artistic-performative projects that dealt with agency, resilience and body awareness and explored physical and mental boundaries.

Marina Abramovic has been setting international standards as a performance artist since the 1970s. Her own body is usually at the center of her often extended performances. She has taken part in documenta three times since 1977 and was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale in 1997. Her performance “The Artist is Present” at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2010) became famous. After teaching in Paris and Berlin, among other places, she took up the newly established Pina Bausch Professorship at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen in the winter semester of 2022/23.