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 202323 academic year was placed on transdisciplinarity, artistic daring and social awareness.

The project supervised by Abramović, 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 longterm performative work form in an experiencebased process. In a workshop entitled "Cleaning the House", which was organised according to a method developed by Marina Abramović, the students developed a sense of the presence required in performances, including the exploration of their individual physical and mental limits.