The Biography Remix

To propose a work about "here and now" which makes you think, makes you worried, which lives through and with danger, that's the aim of Marina Abramovic, one of the pioneers of body art, whose performances have pushed back physical and mental frontiers and made her famous worldwide. In taking her own body as the object of her art, she creates special rituals, acts that are often extracts of daily routine where effort, like pain, take part in this unique moment of truth from which comes an intense feeling shared with the public. This is what she calls liberating and purifying function of performance.
At the height of avant-garde in the 1970s, first of all with her companion Ulay, and then going solo, Marina Abramovic, a daughter of Yugoslav partisans, born in Belgrade in 1946, created work that has marked contemporary art. From 1962 until today she has created and performed many solos, but also group pieces, installations, sculptures, photos and videos. Since the 1990s, she has been working on her biography to place her work in another time and to present its different aspects. This is an approach that she began on her own before handing over a version, for the first time, to video-artist Charles Atlas, and a second one – where for the first time she is only performing – to one of her long-time friends, stage director Michael Laub. For several years she has been teaching performing arts and has begun research on how to pass on the original work of the body artist.


Performances, installations, video works, stage directing, Michael Laub's international career began in the 1970s in Stockholm, with his own group Maniac Production. Then in 1981, he started Remote Control Production and worked mainly in Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Austria. Fascinated by media and the relation between reality and fiction, his work is based on a conception of space and time that is closer to reality than to traditional theatre. In Return of Sensation (1984), Michael Laub, makes remarkable use of video in theatre, but he let that go afterwards and developed a visual dramaturgy that is inspired by plastic arts and cinema. Akin to the Andy Warhol's series concept and William Burrough's cut-ups or free jazz, this director likes to introduce quotes from pop legends into his works, or to recycle reality, to poke fun at stereotypes and to dig around for different sources of ironic humour. While he considers zapping as the most up-to-date way of story-telling, he is also taken with soap operas, police stories and Bollywood, a film genre to which he pays tender and ironic tribute in his Masala Slammer/Heartbreak n°5, which strips Indian romance bare. His staged portraits, like pigg in hell (2000) performed by Astrid Endreuweit, or Gregoire (2004), take him off in another strong exploratory direction.
A woman hanging in space, holding two snakes in her outstretched arms, slapping, video projections of past performances. By using different media, notably visual arts, Belgian artist Michael Laub readapts the art of theatre performance.


Somewhere between a re-worked biography and new documents, The Biography Remix defies categorisation to bring to the stage the life and work of, Marina Abramovic. In the early 1960s, the first forays of this artist marked her revolt against the repressive culture in Tito's Yugolsavia where she grew up. In the 1970s, she performed with her then companion, Ulay, surprising and moving audiences the world over, making her an outstanding personality in contemporary art.
Based on a powerful aesthetic notion of portait, between realism and stylisation, The Biography Remix provides a unique opportunity to discover or to retrace the path of this fascinating personality. In this show, Marina Abramovic is herself on stage, with several of her students, non-professional actors and young performers, and Ulay's son who has taken over where his father left off.
With his own particular way of setting images, of extracting the richest part of them, Michael Laub brings back some of the unforgettable moments of Marina Abramovic's historic performances and, mirrors other, more private feelings of the artist.

Direction : Michael Laub
cast : Marina Abramovic, Matteo Angius, Eun Hye Hwang, Jurriaan Sebastian Löwensteyn, Alessandra Roca, Doreen Uhlig, Herma Auguste Wittstock, Viola Yesiltac
and : Marco Bilanzone, Francesca Borromeo, Roberto Cecchini, Maria Giovanna Massari, Beatrice Novelli (cast in progress)
Singer : Raffaella Misiti
additional music : Larry Steinbachek
Assistant direction : Declan Rooney
video coordination: Jochen Massar
lighting : Luca Storari
Sound : Alfredo Sebastiano
Props and costumes : Marina Schindler

Production : Romaeuropa Festival 2004 (Rome)
En coopération avec : le Teatro Palladium Università Roma Tre
Avec le soutien : du Fonds néerlandais à la Culture, programme du ministère des Affaires étrangères et de l'Education, de la Culture et des Sciences pour soutenir les relations internationales du Pays-Bas, à l'occasion de la présidence néerlandaise de l'Union européenne, et du Festival d'Avignon
Accueil au Festival d'Avignon avec le soutien : de l'Ambassade du Royaume des Pays-Bas à Paris