Marina Abramović. Free Interdisciplinary Performance Lab

With the first appointment of the outstanding performance artist Marina Abramović to the Pina Bausch Professorship at the Folkwang University of the Arts, the focus in the 2022-23 academic year was placed on transdisciplinarity, artistic daring and social awareness. The project supervised by Abramović, entitled “Free Interdisciplinary Performance Lab (FIPL)," was realized in a class of around twenty students from the fields of music (classical and jazz, instrumental, vocal and composition), dance, design, photography, (physical) theater and directing. The students developed individual or collective concepts for performances and learned how to create a long-term performative work form in an experience- based process. Through a workshop entitled “Cleaning the House”, they developed a sense of the presence required in performances, including the exploration of their individual physical and mental boundaries, according to a method proposed by Abramović. Marina Abramović 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.