Yann Marussich

Born in 1966, Yann Marussich is one of a kind in the world of contemporary dance and performance. Flaying, disconcerting, provocative and authentic, he delivers performances that don’t leave you completely unscathed. Since 1989, he has been creating his own pieces and presenting them throughout Europe and the rest of the world. In 2001, he created Bleu provisoire, his first totally immobile piece. From then on, he concentrated on introspection and mastery of immobility, while confronting his body with a variety of demands, even aggression, in his performances. His field of exploration lies halfway between body art and bio art. In December 2015, a performance exhibition of Yann Marussich’s work was organized at Le Commun (Geneva) entitled Experience of Immobility - 20 years of performance Acts, and a retrospective of his artistic career was organized in 2018 at Lieu Unique in Nantes. A multi-faceted artist, Yann Marussich also devotes himself to writing, engraving and drawing, and since 2018 has been exploring new artistic possibilities with the creation of video-performances. 

In addition to his creative activities, he regularly gives workshops and lectures. Since 2011, Yann Marussich has been subsidized by the City of Geneva. Winner of the Prix Ars Electronica in the «hybrid art» category with the performance Bleu Remix in 2008, Yann Marussich was awarded the CERN Collide Geneva artistic residency prize at the end of 2019. In 2022, he will receive the Swiss Performing Arts Award for lifetime achiev  

A bathtub in the Dominican Church, filled with broken glass. A man’s forearm rises straight up, the rest of his body buried under the weight of 600 kilograms of sharpedged pieces. But something is moving under the sea of shards: Yann Marussich is breathing. How did he get into this predicament, and can he free himself without help or serious injury? Over the next hour and a half to two hours, the extreme performer works cautiously to overcome his self-inflicted immobility. Glass cracks, leaving a layer of shiny shards on battered skin. The artist’s facial expression remains unaffected from the procedure, as if his gaze is no longer one of this world and for this world. “For me, it’s about not feeling the pain, surrendering to it, accepting it, and not being influenced by it.” How can it continue? “I cannot cross this line. Death would be the next extreme. (...) Now I have to fly.”