Page 12 - PIP

Entangled Ways of Working
Martina Ruhsam
Jasna L. Vinovrški and Clément Layes are partners in private and in public, in work and life. As a couple their lives are intimately woven together, they have children and a shared home. When working together as artists, they emphasize the aspect of mutual support.
In 2008 Jasna L. Vinovrški and Clément Layes (both choreographers and performers in personal union) founded the company Public in Private in Berlin – dedicated to the further development of choreography as a contemporary art form. They thereby transitioned from working within institutions to working as freelance artists in the free scene in Berlin. With the establishment of the company they started to shape their own conditions of work. Ever since, the two artists have been developing artistic works at the Atelierhouse Flutgraben located at Kunstfabrik am Flutgraben in Berlin.
Working under the societal organisation of a neoliberal economy, they resist the idea of private seclusion and the apotheosis of private property. They seek to invent counter models to the artist as self- entrepreneur or manager of him/herself. They have, since the very beginning of their working together, been developing two different choreographic aesthetics within the scope of one company. The studio of Public in Private allows for another temporality of working since one does not have to adhere to strictly allocated rehearsal/reservation schedules. In this way, the studio is able to respond to the needs of the respective process. Insofar this working space enables the artists to counter the waxing commodification of time.
One year prior to the foundation of the company, an art book with the title "Double Act. Two Artists One Expression" 1 was released. As the title suggests, the book sets forth this particular idea of artistic collaboration by portraying numerous artist couples who work together and who sublimate the pursuit of a singular artistic subjectivity to a shared artistic endeavour, namely the joint creation of artworks.
The publication focuses on 14 established artist couples from the past 25 years that worked together in/as one single expressive unit, such as Gilbert & George, Ulay and Abramović, Komar & Melamid, Eva and Adele, Tim Noble and Sue Webster among others. The aim of Jasna L. Vinovrški and Clément Layes is contrary to this mode of collaboration and the idea of amalgamation – that two artists (who are a couple) work together so closely that one does not have an artistic practice without the other one any longer.
In a short text about the company on their website, they point in another direction: “sustained dissonance”. Since the foundation of Public in Private, both Jasna L. Vinovrški and Clément Layes have been working as makers, with both of them developing and presenting various performances. At the same time they often collaborate with each other in their works that carry the signature of one of them. In Clément Layes’ performances 'Allege', 'To allege' and 'Der grüne Stuhl', Jasna L. Vinovrški was involved as a dramaturge, in 'To allege' she was also performing, in 'Things that surround us', 'Title' and 'Eternal Return' she was a choreographic assistant or artistic adviser.
Ginsbourne, Mark/Meyer zu Kueingdorf, Ulf: Double Act. Two Artists. One Expression, Munich/Berlin/London/New York: Prestel Verlag, 2007.
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