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.