Bojan Jablanovec

Theatre director, VN artistic director

Projects (91) Photo (121) Video (81) Media responses (305) Text (64)
All That You Came For VN20 • Video 26:25
All That You Came For Video 26:25 (VN20)
No One Should Have Seen This VN20 • Video 49:17
No One Should Have Seen This Video 49:17 (VN20)
Reflections Umetnost igre RTV Slovenija
Reflections TV Slovenija: Gledališče kot medij komunikacije
Good Deal • Video clip 04:48
Good Deal Video clip 04:48
Final Solution Video
Final Solution Video 17:04
Balance Video
Balance Video 10:00
MandićCircus (dressed) • Video clip
MandićCircus (dressed) Video clip 1:26
MandićCircus • Video clip 
MandićCircus Video clip 1:07
Physis Cinema Video clip 02:46
Physis Cinema Video clip 02:46 (Cukrarna)
Two Bottles Video
Two Bottles Video 02:15
Consumer Art Video
Consumer Art Video 03:11
Republic Video
Republic Video 03:02
One Two Free AR Video
One Two Free AR video 03:01
Tomorrow We Attack (The Kiss) Video
Tomorrow We Attack (The Kiss) AR video 02:47
True Story Video clip
True Story Video clip 01:34
Physis That’s Life video
Physis Video clip 06:03 (That's Life)
Physis Icons Video 10:09
Physis Icons Video 10:09
Naked Life Video clip 02:49
Naked Life Video clip 02:49
*oly *ary Video 1:02:41
*oly *ary Video 1:02:41
Sorry Video (extracts) 1:35:47
Sorry Video (extracts) 1:35:47
365 Falls Video
365 Falls Video 1:36:46
365 Falls Video (Frame trailer)
365 Falls Video trailer 00:31 (Frame)
365 Falls Video (Last Wave trailer)
365 Falls Video trailer 00:44 (Last Wave)
365 Falls Video (Each Step trailer)
365 Falls Video trailer 00:32 (Each Step)
365 Falls Video (Labels trailer)
365 Falls Video trailer 00:32 (Labels)
365 Falls Video (Fallen trailer)
365 Falls Video trailer 00:28 (Fallen)
365 Falls Video (Change trailer)
365 Falls Video trailer 00:22 (Change)
365 Falls Video (Books trailer)
365 Falls Video trailer 00:22 (Books)
365 Falls video (Bull trailer)
365 Falls Video trailer 00:46 (Bull)
365 Falls • The Audience Council Video 10:56
365 Falls The Audience Council • Video 10:56
The Heart Video clip 0:57
The Heart Video trailer 0:57
Together Video clip 03:04
Together Video clip 03:04
The Ninth Video (Faces) 01:28
The Ninth Video 01:28 (Faces)
The Ninth Video clip 02:45
The Ninth Video clip 02:45
Hundred Toasts Video clip
Hundred Toasts Video clip 01:15
Manipulations Video
Manipulations Video 1:12:02
And So On And So Forth Video
And So On And So Forth Video 1:13:04
And So On And So Forth Video trailer
And So On And So Forth Video trailer 00:55
Last Rehearsal for a Generation Video
Last Rehearsal for a Generation Video 1:11:52
Last Rehearsal for a Generation Video (Explosion)
Last Rehearsal for a Generation Video 04:30 (Explosion)
MandićMachine (Zoom) • Video 2:22:57
MandićMachine Video 2:22:57 (Zoom)
The Brake • Video 42:50
The Brake Video 42:50
On the Right Track • Video 57:13
On the Right Track Video 57:13
Retrospective VN 2002 – 2012 • Video 1:15:37
Retrospective 2002-2012 Video 1:15:37 • Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana
Just the Beginning • Video 1:06:30
Just the Beginning Video 1:06:30
Just the Beginning • Video clip 03:55
Just the Beginning Video clip 03:55
Oops • Video 42:33
Oops Video 42:33
Oops • Video trailer 04:06
Oops Video trailer 04:06
Shame • Video 1:11:55
Shame Video 1:11:55
Shame • Video clip 02:08
Shame Video clip 02:08
MandićMachine • Video 1:28:20
MandićMachine Video 1:28:20
Mandić? What the Fuck Is Mandić? • Video 28:22
Mandić? What the fuck is Mandić? Video clip 28:22
The First Law of B.K. • Video 33:53
The First Law of B.K. Video 33:53
Naked Presence • Video clip 8:10
Naked Presence Video clip 8:10
Drop Dead • Video 47:39
Drop Dead Video 47:39
Still Life • Video 27:05
Still Life Video 27:05
Via MSU Zagreb Retrospective • Video 1:00:18
Retrospective 2002-2012 Video 1:00:18 • Via MSU Zagreb
Casablanca Therapy • Video 1:01:01
Casablanca Therapy Video 1:01:01
Invalid • Video 52:01
Invalid Video 52:01
Tonight I Celebrate • Video 46:14
Tonight I Celebrate Video 46:14
Viva Mandić • Video 39:47
Viva Mandić Video 39:47
Spotlight on Me • Video 39:09
Spotlight on Me Video 39:09
Pure Performance • Video 49:38
Pure Performance Video 49:38
Good Deal • Video 52:49
Good Deal Video 52:49
Interview With the Artist • Video 51:20
Interview With the Artist Video 51:20
Game With Toothpicks • Video 31:59
Game With Toothpicks Video 31:59
Buyer With an Eye • Video 31:03
Buyer With an Eye Video 31:03
All That You Came For • Video 29:33
All That You Came For Video 29:33
What Joseph Beuys Told Me, While I Lay Dead in His Arms • Video 36:17
What Joseph Beuys Told Me… Video 36:17
No One Should Have Seen This • Video 43:51
No One Should Have Seen This Video 43:51
Erasing the Audience • Video 54:37
Erasing the Audience Video 54:37
Out – Video 1:32:52
Out Video 1:32:52
Four Deaths • Video 1:18:57
Four Deaths Video 1:18:57
Not Like Me • Video 1:10:40
Not Like Me Video 1:10:40
Not Like Me • Video 06:35 (Game With Knives)
Not Like Me Video 06:35 (Game With Knives)
Viva Verdi • Video 1:01:24
Viva Verdi Video 1:01:24
Would Would Not • Video 1:42:56
Would Would Not Video 1:42:56
Incasso • Video 1:04:20
Incasso Video 1:04:20
More • Video 1:30:57 (trojke)
More Video 1:30:57 (threes)
More • Video 54:03 (3 Evenings)
More Video 54:03 (3 Evenings)
Starting Point Anger • Video 1:05:31
Starting Point Anger Video 1:05:31

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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.