Nicholas Tesla, Gertrude Stein
I was born in 1946 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, where I studied at the Academy of Fine Arts. Ulay (F. Uwe Laysiepen) was born in 1943 in Solingen, Germany. Our work is the subject of several publications, including Marina Abramovic and Ulay: Relation Work and Detour (1980). In 1986 we received the Polaroid Video Art Award. Our collaborative works have been exhibited at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Venice Biennale; Documentas 6 and 7, Kassel, Germany and The Tate Gallery, London. We both live in Amsterdam.
From 1976 to 1988, we undertook a rigorous artistic collaboration, during which they produced works in performance, video and life-size Polaroid photography. We were active in the European body art/performance movement. We began our collaboration in Amsterdam with Relation Work, a series of provocative, ritualistic performances that were often documented on video. We investigated male and female energies as a dialogue of body and self, testing the limits of mental and physical endurance, risk, and identity. We sat motionless, back to back, hair tied together, for seventeen hours. We screamed into each other's open mouths until hoarse, and repeatedly ran at high speed and collided. Our performance strategy was to use the body as art-making material, presenting ourselves as art objects to explore and transcend the physical and psychological limitations of the self.
From 1981 to 1986, we presented Nightsea Crossing, an epic performance of motionless meditation and concentration, in ninety sites around the world. With City of Angels in 1983, we began a series of ethnographic videotapes that extended the intensified vision and temporality of their metaphysical performances. We attempted to capture the mythic essence of specific cultures, «to have the most original moment of a culture presented as a living being,» as Ulay says.
In 1988, as our final artistic collaboration before pursuing individual projects, we completed a walk along the Great Wall of China, with Ulay starting alone from its western end, and I from the east.