Prof. Janez Janša

Head of MA Solo/Dance/Authorship

Janez Janša is a contemporary performance artist who in his performance, conceptual and interdisciplinary art works focus on the relation between art and the social and political context surrounding it. His particular areas of research comprise performativity of name, relation between art and war, as well as time and temporalities in art and life.

For Janez Janša artistic practice, theoretical reflection and political engagement are not separated: he was the director of Maska (1998-2021), an institute for publishing, artistic production and education, based in Ljubljana, Slovenia and edited several books on contemporary dance and theatre. He was editor-in-chief of Maska, performing arts journal (1999-2006). He is author of the book on early works by Jan Fabre (La discipline du chaos, le chaos de la discipline, 1994). He is a co-founder and the first president of the Association of the NGO and freelance artists (“Asociacija”) in Slovenia. As a performer, he collaborated with choreographers Meg Stuart, Boris Charmatz and Iztok Kovač a.o.

He lectures both in artistic and academic contexts and was a guest professor at William de Kooning Academy, Rotterdam, FU Berlin, University of Gothenburg, and University of Roehampton, London. He was a research fellow at the Interweaving Performance Culture (International research centre) at FU Berlin and teaches at the MA program of the Academy for Theatre, Film and Television Ljubljana.

In 2020, he was appointed as the head of the MA program Solo/Dance/Authorship at the Inter-University Centre for Dance Berlin. He is a member of the theory curatorial team at Tanzquartier Wien and a member of editorial boards of the journals Performance Research and Maska.

In 2007 together with two other Slovenian artists he changed his previous name into the name of the conservative, three times prime-minister of Slovenia. Together with Janez Janša and Janez Janša he is the owner of the Janez Janša® registered trade mark.