Michal Murin

* 1963

  • “I was not really proceeding as expected with my studies, I had taken a lot of resits. Once I received a question from scientific communism about the Conclusions from the XIII Congress of the Communisty Party. I didn’t read it. She asked me what I was doing? I started to tell her about the American conceptual theatre, use of projections in drama, about using pre-made films, about cuts from film found in trash, those 8mm stripes as part of my projections….. as part of my multimedia theatre piece. She just gave me 3 and let me go…"

  • “Some still say that it was the most experimental theater in Slovakia. Those who have stayed in it and are still doing it have a really strong experience. We were seen as cult, mysterious, and I even caught the suspicion that we were taking drugs. We were non-communicative, it was non-verbal theater, that is, we didn't articulate anything. Everything was in gestures, but not pantomime, but abstract ... So actually, everyone could see what he wanted in it, and since the climate was as it was, everyone saw what he was cheering for. ”

  • “My father came from the northern part of Slovakia, that is, from the Polish border where there are Ruthenians, thus he was Ruthenian. However, in his ID he had Ukrainian nationality. And it wasn't clear to me, so I asked him why he was Ukrainian when he spoke Ruthenian. At that time, I learned, sometimes at grammar school, that Ruthenians as a nationality were forbidden. My father told me many years would pass, when we would be able to freely identify ourselves as Ruthenians. So that was another moment, and in this way, a young person gradually starts to decipher something. “ 


  • Full recordings
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    Bratislava, 15.09.2019

    (audio)
    duration: 01:49:08
    media recorded in project Stories of the 20th century
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Such combination of education is unique for an artist


Michal Murin was born on June 30, 1963 in Presov. He studied Computer science and mathematics at the University of Economics in Bratislava. He was a member of nonverbal theatre BALVAN, officially founded in 1987. He later was a member of a group Transmusic comp, or Society for unconventional music. Michal worked in Bratislava as a programmer at Meopta. After leaving Meopta in 1990, he began to devote himself fully to art. He received his university education in the field of fine arts at the Brno University of Technology from 1999 to 2001. He completed his doctoral studies (2001 to 2003) in Bratislava at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design (VŠVU). Since 2005 he has been the head of the Studio of Digital Media at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Academy of Arts in Banská Bystrica and since 2011 she has been leading the Studio of New Media at the Faculty of Arts, Technical University of Košice. He lives in Bratislava.

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