Marina Abramovic. Free Interdisciplinary Performance Lab

The pioneer of performance art and her class

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 realised in a class of around twenty 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 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.