Ulay and Jan Fabre in Conversation ”Crossing the Line: redefining boundaries of performance in the 21st Century”

CCA /Creative Cultural Alliance is delighted to announce a major event featuring Ulay and Jan Fabre.

Organized within the framework of the inaugural edition of its Contemporary Performance Practices program (Ivan Talijančić, Artistic Director) with Troubleyn Jan Fabre (Jan Fabre, Ivana Jozić and Annabelle Chambon, Faculty) and SITI Company Anne Bogart (Barney O’Hanlon, Faculty) the CCA is delighted to gift Rijeka with this public event, featuring two of the most visionary, ground-breaking contemporary artists living today in conversation with Daniela Urem (CCA, Founding President) and contemporary artist Igor Eškinja, moderated by Ivan Talijančić and hosted by the MMSU/Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Rijeka.

Both of the featured guests are bound to remain historic figures within the realm of contemporary art. Ulay rose to prominence by mid-1970s, through radical intimate actions and explorations of the body with Polaroid photography, developing a comprehensive series of work that re-established the intertwined relationship between photography and performance. In his quest for self-identification, in 1976, Ulay had a fateful encounter with Marina Abramović. Feeling complete as one, Ulay / Abramović made Relation Works, to question the preconceived notion about gender and the fluidity between masculine and feminine while pushing the boundaries of the body through charging, long lasting and enduring performances. Ulay’s commitment to exploring and expanding the medium of photography, whilst breaking new ground in performance art, had the artist travel many places in a geographical as well as in an experimental sense.

Meanwhile, in the late 1970s, the still very young Jan Fabre caused a furor as a performance artist. His Money performances involved setting fire to bundles of money from the audience in order to make drawings with the ashes. In years to follow, Fabre built an extensive oeuvre of innovative, controversial and strikingly theatrical performances. Alongside age-old rituals and philosophical questions, Fabre also deals with such themes as violence, lust, beauty and erotica. The body in all its forms has been the subject of his investigations since the early 1980s. Over the past 30 years, he has produced works as a theatre maker, author and visual artist. Jan Fabre is renowned for expanding the horizons of every genre to which he applies his immense artistic vision.

During our special event at MMCA, our guests will have an intimate conversation under the title ”Crossing the Line: redefining boundaries of performance in the 21st Century”. The speakers will discuss the landscape of the 21st-century time-based art, where the traditional definitions of genres and disciplines are being transcended in favor of multiple, fluid, hybrid art forms – considering that both Ulay and Fabre could certainly be considered the early proponents of convention-defying, multidisciplinary performance practices.

The event is organized as part of the CCA’s Contemporary Performance Practices in a collaboration with the Troubleyn Jan Fabre, Ulay Foundation and the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Rijeka with the support from the Trust for Mutual Understanding (New York, USA), FACE Croatia (New York, USA), SITI Company Anne Bogart (New York, USA) and MAST / Master module in Art, Science and Technology.

About CCA

The CCA establishes close connections and interdependencies between teaching, research as well as the international collaboration, public projects and events. It promotes critical thinking and new forms of cultural policy and management, artistic and intellectual engagement at the intersections of art, culture, science and society.

The CCA is founded by Daniela Urem, Michela Magaš and Gaella Gottwald.