Marina Abromović takes over Sky Arts channel
October 16, 2020
Marina Abromović will be the first artist in history to take over an entire TV channel. Exclusive to Sky Arts, Marina will be bringing her unique vision to television for the first time, telling the 100-year story of performance art- now the fastest growing, most controversial art form in the world.
Her mission is simple: to take performance art to as wide, diverse, young and global an audience as possible.
For the course of one evening, Marina will take over a dramatic TV space, deep diving into the very origins of performance art and its evolution to modern day, showcasing live performance from the most diverse, exciting, emerging artists in the world. Conceptually, this will be a mix of programmes and archive fronted by Marina, plus live and ‘as live’ performance.
Marina will explore the big themes of the art form to which she has devoted her life, making connections between the human body, sculpture, film, music, fashion, advertising, dance, community, society, spirituality and even life and death. The result will be eye-popping, beautiful, baffling, funny, heart-stopping and mind blowing.
The performance will contain elements of her own personal inspirations, from Dada and Salvador Dali to David Bowie, Cabaret Volaire, to Maria Calls, Surrealism to the Sex Pistols. This will culminate in a climatic final performance with mass participation led by Marina herself. The evening will not just educate and entertain Sky Arts viewers: it will shock, surprise, thrill and seduce.
Today’s announcement follows Sky Arts recent move to become a free-to-air channel, supercharging its mission to increase access to and drive participation in the arts, at a vital time for the cultural sector.
Marina’s Sky Arts takeover will air on Sky Arts this December and will be produced by Northern Town productions.
Marina Abromović said: “The world needs this art form now more than ever. It cannot change your life but it can open up a way to see it differently. This will be television as you’ve never seen before.”
Philip Edgar-Jones, Director of Sky Arts, said: “As part of Sky’s ongoing commitment to arts and innovation, we’re delighted to be working with Marina and facilitating her brilliant, unique and artistic vision. This marks not only a first for Marina in transporting her art form to television performance, but a first for Sky Arts too, making us the first channel to ever grant an artist full control of a TV channel. Yes, that’s right, I’ll be handing the reigns over to Marina fully for the night. Gulp. I’m incredibly proud we’ve been able to make this happen and I’m excited to see what’s next for Sky Arts.”
Eddie Morgan, Executive Producer founder of Northern town “We’re thrilled to be working with Marina Abramović and Sky Arts. Together we want to make this as original, bold, accessible, ground-breaking and un-missable as possible. Performance art is maybe not for everyone, but we want to show it can be for anyone. We want to try new things. You don’t get to new places by following old roads.”