November 2011
61 posts
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Justin Vivian Bond: The Fall of The House of...
By Ryan Tracy
A piano waits in the center of the room, keyboard open, with the score from Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “Climb Every Mountain” quietly mounted on its front.[[MORE]] Standing against a wall, a bookshelf is home to volumes by Lillian Hellman, James Purdy, Joan Didion and Jean Genet; biographies of the jazz singer Anita O’Day, Francis Bacon and Federico Fellini; tomes covering...
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WatchOn November 5th, Lebanese artist Tarek Atoui invited 16 musicians and sound artists including Anti-Pop Consortium, Uriel Barthelemi, Jonathan Butcher, Mira Calix, DJ Spooky, Lukas Ligeti, Robert Lowe, Raz Mesinai, Zeena Parkins, Ikue Mori, Sara Parkins, Elliott Sharp, Zafer Tawil and Georges Ziadeh to interpret elements of the world’s largest collection of Classical Arab music. The above video is...
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Synchronized Swimming and the AIDS Crisis:...
By Lindsay C. Harris
Among faint smells of chlorine and harsh red lights, 12 women with minimal Day-of-the-Dead-like makeup floated in a circle around a large, bloated figure with a long white cape descending deep into the dark water. Low thuds and chants began to play, as the swimmers dipped and flipped their way to the center.[[MORE]]
This ambitious performance, Ilulwane, by young South...
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Ragnar Kjartansson’s Bliss
By Alexander Ferrando
A twelve-hour- long repetition of an excerpt from the final act of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro sounds disagreeable, or so one might think. Replete with a full orchestra, operatic singers in Baroque costumes, namely the great Icelandic tenor Kristján Jóhannsson, Ragnar Kjartansson’s Bliss quite extraordinarily incorporated all its parts to create one engrossing...
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Robert Ashley’s Opera That Morning Thing
By Ceci Moss
Robert Ashley’s opera That Morning Thing is a rumination on spoken language. Split into three acts and an epilogue, the first piece, “Frogs”, sets the tone by motioning toward the inevitable misunderstandings and inconsistencies of language. The composition is introduced by audio of various frog species croaking, most likely sampled from scientific recordings, which then...
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Guy Maddin's Tales from the Gimli Hospital:...
By Alexander Ferrando
Beginning with a grandmother in vaguely Old World dress who recounts to her grandchildren an equally Old World tale of peril and fantasy, Guy Maddin’s Tales from the Gimli Hospital: Reframed is a beautiful and rousing reworking of the Canadian filmmaker’s 1988 feature-length debut. For his Performa 11 Commission, the first given to a filmmaker, Maddin worked with...
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"All that scratching is making me itch!"
Malcolm McLaren, “Buffalo Gals”. 1982. The first- ever Malcolm McLaren awards will take place at the Performa 11 Grand Finale, with an award designed by Marc Newson and presented by Lou Reed and Greil Marcus.
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Hennessey Youngman's 98% Guaranteed Formula for...
ART THOUGHTZ: How To Be A Successful Artist from Hennessy Youngman. Youngman performs on November 20th as part of Performa Ha! at Ha! Comedy Club, New York.
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Club Nutz: Pioneering Trance-like Comedy in Tiny...
Interview by Johnny Misheff
Let’s break down the title of Scott and Tyson Reeder’s ongoing comedy experience, Club Nutz, for a minute. The ‘Club’ connotes the obvious: a group of people gathering with a common purpose. The ‘Nutz’ smacks of whimsy, a promise of some sort of amusement. But is Club Nutz just a comedy club? Hardly. It’s a workshop, a...
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Curator Mark Beasley Speaks to Robert Ashley About...
Interview by Mark Beasley
A remounting of Robert Ashley’s legendary opera, That Morning Thing (1967), premieres tonight as part of Performa 11. That Morning Thing was performed only three times in the late 1960s, but acquired its reputation through rumor and the famous recordings of two sections, “Purposeful Lady Slow Afternoon”and “She Was A Visitor” (released...
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"My dream had always been to save up my little...
Interview by Damien Davis
Attendants from battle of yestermore
iona rozeal brown’s live performance battle of yestermore features a wide range of influences including myth-based genres like Kabuki and Noh theater, as well as the “vogueing” made famous in the Harlem ballroom scene of the 1960s. This Performa commission will feature performances by vogueing legends such as Benny and...
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"Our real art is our interaction with the world”
Bibbe Hansen on Fluxus pioneer Al Hansen
By Alexander Cavaluzzo
To kick off Performa’s “52 Hours of Fluxus” this past weekend, performance artist Bibbe Hansen gave a lecture and performance on her father, Fluxus artist Al Hansen. Hosted in the intimate Golden Gallery on Elizabeth Street, Hansen began her presentation by giving an overview of Al Hansen’s life and work, relaying...
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Rashaad Newsome's Rap Battle, The Tournament
Highlights from The Tournament, Rashaad Newsome’s epic Medieval- style rap battle for Performa 11. Read the Performa Magazine review by Andrea Hill, Betina Bethlem and Serena Qiu here.
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“Being alive is the bane of my existence”
Jack Ferver as Cleopatra in Me, Michelle
By Lumi Tan
When taking up the mythic role of Cleopatra, just learning of her lover and political ally Antony’s suicide, dramatic statements are a must: “Being alive is the bane of my existence” “I want to die…I’m bored, tell me a story” “Fucking Octavian! Fucking Herod!” Charismatic dancer and choreographer Jack Ferver enacted the role with relish in...
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The Eyes of Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand’s first- ever TV interview with CBS’s Mike Wallace reveals her political philosophy that among other things, the state and economics should remain separate. It is this scene that provided inspiration for Dennis McNulty’s Performa Project The Eyes of Ayn Rand that explores the rupture of Communist Russia.
Dennis McNulty, The Eyes of Ayn Rand. 2011.
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Liutauras Psibilskis on the Ginger Island Project
Interview by Summer Guthery
Ginger Island
On the occasion of his curated events comprising the Ginger Island Project, independent curator and writer Liutauras Psibilskis had an email conversation with Summer Guthery about the unfolding lecture, exhibitions at the Emily Harvey Foundation and the Storefront for Art and Architecture, and a sound performance at pop-up venue Red Egg that took...
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Ming Wong's Persona Performa
By Andrea Hill
Film still from Ingmar Bergman’s Persona, 1966.
Astoria was home to filmmaking in America during the pre- Hollywood era when hundreds of silent films were produced during the turn of the century. It’s fitting then, that Ming Wong’s homage to Ingmar Bergman’s Persona occupied nearly every square inch of the American Museum of the Moving Image’s lobby, which sits on the former site...
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Simon Fujiwara's The Boy Who Cried Wolf
By Nicola Trezzi
As obvious as it seems nowadays, the conception of an artwork that is multilayered, open to possible critiques, not boring and fun is almost a mission impossible. Everything has been done and therefore artists are competing to see who is the most intellectual, the most refined and the most full of references.[[MORE]]
When it comes to Simon Fujiwara, all of these questions...
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“As long as that everyday object doesn’t serve an actual function within society, then it can be elevated to the realm of art.”
-Hennessey Youngman in “How to Make an Art”
Hennessey Youngman performs at Performa Ha!.
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Shelly Nadashi's Refrigerating Apparatus
By Katy Diamond Hamer
Seated in the front row of an old classroom over the weekend at the Performa Hub, I waited patiently for artist Shelly Nadashi to begin Refrigerating Apparatus. Each chair in the audience was occupied and shortly past 6pm the artist arrived and walked slowly into the room wearing a floral robe, white sweatpants, a black wig with an unkempt ponytail and maroon Adidas...
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WatchAfter Tyler Ashley and the SARAHS’ Half-Mythical, Half-Legendary Americanism performance in Times Square, they perform on the High Line on November 14th, 2011. Constructivist calisthenics at their finest.
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Nathaniel Mellors on Trying to "Not Make Work Like...
Interview by Performa 11 Staff
British artist and musician Nathaniel Mellors is known for making films and installations that deal with the vicissitudes of language through absurdist scripts, psychedelic theatre, film, video, performance, collage and sculpture. His Performa 11 Premiere, Ourhouse (November 16th and 17th, 2011), is a surreal six-part video series that combines sculpture,...
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Laurel Nakadate on Riding a Unicycle and her...
Interview by Performa 11 Staff
James Franco and Laurel Nakadate
Laurel Nakadate is a photographer, video artist and filmmaker. Her work has been exhibited at PS1 MoMA, New York; Yerba Buena, San Francisco; The Getty Museum, Los Angeles and the Reina Sofia, Madrid, and is in many public and private collections including the Yale University Art Gallery, the Saatchi Collection and the Museum of...
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"Iran is a dictatorship and artists such as me...
Interview by RoseLee Goldberg
Seeking Martyrdom (Version 1), 1995. Pen and ink on gelatin silver print.
The following is an excerpt from a conversation between Performa Founding Director and Curator RoseLee Goldberg, Performa 11 artist Shirin Neshat and the audience, hosted by the New York Public Library on October 5th, 2011, in celebration of the publication Performa 09: Back to...
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Boris Charmatz’s Musée de la Danse
By Sydney L. Stutterheim
November 7, 8:22 pm. A repetitive, beast-like howl is heard coming from within one of the five former Catholic school rooms that is now the Performa Hub, and today, that contain Boris Charmatz’s Musée de la Danse. Approaching the source of the guttural shrieks, the frame of the doorway provides a small sense of physical security from the performance unfolding...
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Alison Knowles: An Interview with the Seminal...
Interview by Ingrid Chu and Savannah Gorton of Forever & Today, Inc.
New York artist Alison Knowles is a founding member of Fluxus and performed worldwide with the group throughout the 1960s. Her influential performances, event scores, sound, sculpture, works on paper, printmaking, poetry, artist books, and book objects have been featured internationally at the Guggenheim Museum, the...
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Ming Wong's Persona Performa Debuts
Interview by Monique Romney and Thomas Bencivengo
Video by Dexter Buell
Ming Wong interviewed at Museum of the Moving Image by Monique Romney and Thomas Bencivengo from the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts. Video from Dexter Buell on Vimeo. Wong’s Performa 11 Commission, Persona Performa, debuts on November 10th, 2011 at the Museum of the Moving Image.
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WatchMika Rottenberg and Jon Kessler’s first collaboration, SEVEN, is on view for seven more days in New York, ending November 19th, 2011. Visit Performa TV for more exclusive videos.
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"I'm kind of obsessed with the poetic decline of...
By Performa 11 Staff
The above video gives an overview of Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson’s 2009 Venice Biennale work, The End — Venice, a six-month long installation where he produced one painting per day of his subject - Pall Haukur Bjornsson, an Icelandic performance artist, who was dressed in a Speedo bathing suit. Kjartansson teaches a class on Mozart, music and forgiveness with...
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Q: How many performance artists does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: I don’t know; I didn’t stay until the end.
Simon Fujiwara, The Boy Who Cried Wolf.
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Performa Ha! – A Night of Conceptual Stand-up...
By Lindsay C. Harris
“They said it was comedy,” New York-based comedian Dina Seiden repeated into the microphone as she took the stage Sunday night at the HA! Comedy Club. The first night of Performa Ha!, curated by Mark Beasley featuring Reggie Watts, Dina Seiden, Bedwyr Williams and Lumberob, proved to be a night of incest, beatboxing, fake British accents, miming, Donald Sutherland and...
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Nils Bech: "I started performing alone at the...
Interview by Hanne Mugaas
Bendik Giske with Nils Bech
The Norwegian singer and performer Nils Bech is in New York to present two parts of his piece Look Inside at the New Museum of Contemporary Art and Greene Naftali Gallery as part of Performa 11. In his performances, Bech creates rituals as tools, allowing him to reenact emotional circumstances from his life through voice, movement,...
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WatchFrom Performa TV: Andrey Kuzkin performs during the Performa Hub’s opening night.
