M HKA Ensembles

Performance, 05:00:00.

14.12.2004
Paris, Palais de Tokyo

Respect for the art and love for the beauty are the motivations behind this collaboration. In this performance, in the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, Jan Fabre and Marina Abromović attempt to find the virgin/warriors in history who fought for the beauty.

'During the day: performed the ritual of preparation
with Marina Abramović the Palais de Tokyo.
In the evening: in the hotel bar,
drank each other's energy and fed each other
with ideas and actions.
During the night: in the hotel room,
an unspoken mutual awareness that we trust
each other.
The ritual we have designed together will not
detract from our independence
from our individuality and from our wilfulness.
We both possess the irrepressible desire
to arrive at insight through experience.
The 'Virgin / Warrior' performance
is inteded to be a poem.
The art will take shape between the lines.'

(Jan Fabre, Paris, 13 December 2004)

'We were two brave armoured knight-insects
who embodied the durability of futility.
There was thought behind all actions.
Everything we did was authentic
because we thought it up.
It was a five-hour-long declaration of love
to the art of performance.
Thousands of eyes around our cage were witnesses
to it.
(I could not have imagined a finer birthday.)'

(Jan Fabre, Paris, 14 December 2004)