Bojan Jablanovec

Theatre director, VN artistic director

Projects (91) Photo (121) Video (81) Media responses (305) Text (64)
Reflections Why All This At All?
Reflections Marin Blažević, Bojan Jablanovec, Katarina Stegnar, Gregor Zorc, Marko Mandić
Reflections A Collective Cronicle: May 15th – 21st, Bojan Jablanovec
Reflections The Year 2017. A Collective Cronicle: May 15th - 21st, Bojan Jablanovec
Don’t Force Me to Say What I Think Spectacular Theses About the Spectacle
Don’t Force Me to Say What I Think Spectacular Theses About the Spectacle
Don’t Force Me to Say What I Think Performance text
Don’t Force Me to Say What I Think Projected text
Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee
Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee Program
MandićCircus • Performance text
MandićCircus Performance text
MandićCircus Gledališki list
MandićCircus Flyer
Reflections Ubijanje neodvisne scene
Reflections Bojan Jablanovec: Ubijanje neodvisne scene
Reflections The Impossible Question
Reflections Bojan Jablanovec: The Impossible Question
Just the Beginning • Letter to the President
Just the Beginning Letter to the President
MandićMachine • List of quoted roles
MandićMachine List of quoted roles
Physis Performance text
Physis Performance text
*oly *ary Performance text
*oly *ary Performance text
Sorry Performance text
Sorry Performance text
365 Falls Gledališki list
365 Falls Flyer
Hundred Toasts Performance text
Hundred Toasts Performance text (Tito)
Manipulations • Performance text
Manipulations Performance text
And So On And So Forth • Performance text
And So On And So Forth Performance text
Last Rehearsal for a Generation • Performance text
Last Rehearsal for a Generation Performance text
Last Rehearsal for a Generation • Izjava za medije
Last Rehearsal for a Generation Press release
Reflections Why and What to Perform
Reflections Bojan Jablanovec: Why and What to Perform
Naked Presence • Program
Naked Presence Program
Reflections Via Nova 2009 Program
Reflections Bojan Jablanovec: Via Nova Program
Just the Beginning • Performance text (Athens)
Just the Beginning Performance text (Athens)
On the Right Track • Performance text
On the Right Track Performance text
Retrospective VN 2002 – 2012 • Otvoritveni govor
Retrospective 2002-2012 No One Should Have Seen This • Opening
Just the Beginning • Izvedbeno besedilo (Ljubljana)
Just the Beginning Performance text (Ljubljana)
Oops • Performance text
Oops Performance text
Shame • Performance text
Shame Performance text
MandićMachine • Performance text
MandićMachine Performance text
Via MKC Split • Program
Via MKC Split Program
The First Law of B.K. • Performance text
The First Law of B.K. Performance text
Hunt for the Real Performance text
Hunt for the Real Performance text
Naked Presence • Event scenario
Naked Presence Event scenario
Guilty • Performance text
Guilty! Performance text
Via MSU Zagreb • Program
Via MSU Zagreb Program
Casablanca Therapy • Performance text
Casablanca Therapy Performance text
Invalid • Performance text
Invalid Performance text
Tonight I Celebrate • Performance text
Tonight I Celebrate Performance text
Viva Mandić • Performance text
Viva Mandić Performance text
Spotlight on Me • Performance text
Spotlight on Me Performance text
Pure Performance • Performance text
Pure Performance Performance text
Via Nova Museum • Program
Via Nova Museum Program
Good Deal • Performance text
Good Deal Performance text
Game With Toothpicks • Performance text
Game With Toothpicks Performance text
All That You Came For • Performance text
All That You Came For Performance text
Interview With the Artist • Performance text
Interview With the Artist Performance text
What Joseph Beuys Told Me, While I Lay Dead in His Arms • Performance text
What Joseph Beuys Told Me… Performance text
Erasing the Audience • Performance text
Erasing the Audience Performance text
Out • Performance text
Out Performance text
Four Deaths • Flyer
Four Deaths Flyer
Four Deaths • Performance text
Four Deaths Performance text
Not Like Me • Performance text
Not Like Me Performance text
Not Like Me • Flyer
Not Like Me Flyer
Viva Verdi • Performance text
Viva Verdi Performance text
Would Would Not • Flyer
Would Would Not Flyer
Would Would Not • Performance text
Would Would Not Performance text
One More Warrior Every Day • Performance text
One More Warrior Every Day Performance text
Incasso • Letak
Incasso Flyer
Incasso • Performance text
Incasso Izvedbeno besedilo
Reflections Konceptualna izhodišča VN
Reflections Bojan Jablanovec: Konceptualna izhodišča VN
More • Flyer
More Flyer
Starting Point Anger • Flyer
Starting Point Anger Flyer
Starting Point Anger • Performance text
Starting Point Anger Performance text

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Bojan Jablanovec

Theatre director, pedagogue, VN artistic director

Bojan Jablanovec (1961) studied Theatre Direction at the AGRFT in Ljubljana. Already in his graduation project Helios (a project based on Brecht’s Galileo Galilei, Cankarjev dom, 1988), Jablanovec showed his interest in opening up the theatrical field and exploring the audience’s perception. In 1989 he conceived and directed the performance Triumph of Death (SNG Maribor), which synthesised the theatrical trends that characterised the 1980s. From 1993 to 1999 he directed in most Slovenian theatres. His productions during this period included Pierre Corneille’s L’Illusion Comique (Slovenian National Award for Best Stage Design), Federico Garcia Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba, Howard Barker’s The Love of a Good Man (Slovenian National Award for Best Director), Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Rex, Philip Ridley’s The Pitchfork Disney, Werner Schwab’s The Presidents, Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s Romulus the Great, Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, Bertold Brecht’s Puntila and His Man Matti, Eugene Ionesco’s The Chairs, Antonin Artaud’s Jet of Blood. From 1997 to 1999, he was an assistant for theatre directing at AGRFT in Ljubljana.

In 1999, Jablanovec stopped directing in Slovenian institutional theatres and devoted himself to theatre research. In the period up to 2002, Jablanovec launched three research projects dealing with the staging of the subject through sexual difference (Europa – The Girl Who Ran Too Fast), the staging of the subject in relation to time (Lenora) and the staging of the subject through the difference between speech and language (Olga Grad vs. Juanna Regina). With these projects Jablanovec successfully established his working method and in 2002 he founded the international platform Via Negativa for contemporary performance art. From the beginning, his main goal has been to develop a working method that allows the performer to stand in front of the audience with his own statement, his own body and his own meaning. This basic creative field becomes the performative “here and now”: my story, my relationship, my body, my situation, my gesture, my conflict… The creative field is strictly limited: a reduction to basic stage elements (via negativa); theatre as a medium of communication and not aestheticization. Via Negativa focuses on the relationship between performer and spectator (between what is shown and what is seen – which is the basis of theatrical communication) and on the question of the real in this relationship (which is the key characteristic of a live theatre situation).

The first seven years of VN (2002 – 2008) were dedicated to seven negative aspects of life, commonly known as the seven deadly sins (anger, gluttony, greed, lust, sloth, envy and pride). The result is a cycle of seven performances entitled Seven Deadly Sins, each of which deals with a ‘deadly sin’ as the basic agent that drives the performative act and forms the relationship with the audience. With the first performances, Starting Point: Anger (2002) and More (2003), Via Negativa clearly outlines its creative field, but the great response from audiences and critics confirms its production method. The next few years saw a period of rapid international expansion of the VN platform. Through a series of workshops, Jablanovec intensively developed a flexible model of international contemporary performing arts production that was not closed in the logic of a limited number of permanent group members. The team of artists becomes international, and with tours to international festivals and contemporary art centres, Via Negatova establishes itself in the European space (Eurokaz Zagreb, Venice Biennale, Hebbel am Ufer Berlin, Kampnagel Hamburg, Teatergarasjen Bergen…). In 2010, the Maska publishing house published the book No, Via Negativa 2002 – 2008.

Between 2009 and 2011, Jablanovec and Via Negativa devote themselves to a new cycle of performances under the collective title Via Nova – a reversal of Via Negativa, announced at the time of its founding in 2002. Via Nova reflects on its own production by asking questions about the relationships between old and new, creation and destruction, theory and practice, copy and original, presence and absence, value and price, etc. The result is a series of twenty small-format performances, which Jablanovec conceptually synthesises into more complex events, establishing a communication with the architecture of the venues and the context of the events into which VN enters (theatre, museum, gallery, symposium, etc.). The most important collective presentations from this period are Via Nova Museum (City Museum Ljubljana, 2009), Via MSU Zagreb (Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb, 2010), Naked Presence (Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, 2010), Via New Territories (Live Art Festival New Territories Glasgow, 2011), No One Should Have Seen This. The Theatre of Via Negativa 2002 – 2012 (Moderna galerija Ljubljana, 2013). In 2012, Maska Ljubljana published the monograph No One Should Have Seen This. The Theatre of Via Negativa 2002 – 2011.

In 2011, Jablanovec begins to create a new performance series under the collective title Irresolvable, which aims to build on the creative processes and performance strategies of VN. It focuses on questions of ideological instrumentalisation, aestheticization and representation of the body, and on the formation of collaborative creative processes. He shifts the creative interest from radical individualisation (as a critique of the neoliberal subject) to the collective, which still represents the utopian ideal of any ideology. Among the most notable projects of this period are On the Right Track (2013), Last Rehearsal for the Generation ( 2014), Hundred Toasts (2015), The Ninth (2016), Together (2018), 365 Falls (2018), Physis (2021).

The working method that Jablanovec continuously develops and improves in his artistic leadership of the VN platform has proven to be an effective educational model for introducing young artists to the field of contemporary performance art in numerous workshops at home and abroad. In 2012 , he founded VN Lab, the Via Negativa Laboratory for performance art. It is a programme of a continuous mentor-led creative process for artists who want to profile themselves as contemporary performance artists. In 2019, he also founded and launched the web portal for reflection on contemporary performing arts , Neodvisni (Independent). The aim of the portal is to establish a reference point for the reflection of independent contemporary performance art production. In 2019, with the aim of a higher level of integration of knowledge, experience and methodologies of artists and producers working in the field of contemporary performance art in Slovenia, he establishes and manages the residency programme for research in contemporary performance art PARL – Performance Art Research Ljubljana.

Between 2020 – 2023 he is teaching at the Academy of Visual Arts (AVA Ljubljana). In 2023 he receive the Ksenija Hribar Award for outstanding contribution to the field of performance art, and in 2024, the Distinguished Artistic Achievement in Theatre Arts by the University of Ljubljana.