Tino Sehgal 
This Progress

“What is progress?” That was the question that was posed to me by a young child, just as I had begun walking up the spiraling ramp of the Guggenheim Museum. From here, I could go on and give a detailed description of my answer to this young boy, and then all the details of the rest of my conversations with the teenage girl that greeted me next, or the man in his thirties that soon interrupted us, or the elderly woman who completed the performance by walking me to the very top of the museum’s ramp, restating that “this is a performance by Tino Sehgal,” and shaking my hand before we parted ways.

Instead, I’ll say that this performance was not at all about defining  “progress.” That’s not to say that “progress” doesn’t have its place in the  performance, because you do progress up the ramp to the top of the museum, and you do progress through different people that represent the progression of age in life. The opening prompt, however, was nothing more than a question designed to start a conversation. Quite frankly, the question could have been, “Coke or Pepsi?” – but since we’re in the Guggenheim, one of the most respected art institutions in the world, the question could hardly be about soda preferences. And after my first conversationalist (as I will call each performer), my definition of progress had vanished into a broader conversation. 

As I worked my way up the ramp, and through my sequence of conversationalists, we exchanged our thoughts and ideas on government, revolution, life, nature, religion versus spirituality, traveling, train rides, and Shakespeare’s King Lear, among other subjects. At times the conversation felt so real and intimate, I forgot I was taking part in a piece of art, that the conversationalists were hired by Mr. Sehgal, and that they performed this very act six days a week for six weeks straight; it felt more like I had known these people intimately for many years.

Because of this, the performance was ultimately about how we have an inherent need for relationships with other people. It also revealed how two people can have completely different life stories, but similar experiences still shape their understanding of the most fundamental aspects of life. For example, when I reached my third conversationalist, a man in his late thirties with a scrappy beard, wearing a vest, jeans, and boots, looking like he just came back from hiking in the woods, he proceeded to tell me a story about the first time he truly felt connected with nature. He was having a late night with his high school friends in Nebraska, where he grew up, sitting on car hoods and drinking, with their headlights beaming out over the open fields. He said he remembered looking out onto the field and thinking how beautiful it was and how he felt, for the first time, a part of it. As we walked further up the ramp, I told him I had a similar experience. Being from Massachusetts, and having a backyard full of trees, I always felt most connected with nature during the summer, when I lay on my deck, basking in the sun, and listening to the soundtrack of the world: trees swaying in the breeze, birds chirping, an airplane flying overhead, and those rare moments of near silence. Though our lived experiences were completely different, we were able to relate to one another on the basis that there was a single moment in our lives where we felt the same thing—a true connection with nature.

My conclusion that the performance was about human relationships—much more than just defining “progress”—was only furthered when I was receding  down the ramp of the museum and, stopping to look over the railing, caught the eye of the young conversationalist who first greeted me. He looked directly at me, smiled, and waved. Right then, I snapped out of the performance and reentered reality. I realized that this was real life. Without entering the museum and taking part in the performance, I would have never encountered, shared conversation, and felt connected to these people on an emotional level, however swift and fleeting these relationships and conversations were.

This Progress ends March 10th, so hurry up to the Guggenheim to take part in a truly unique experience with your own conversationalists.

By Kyle Ganson

Wow – Danspace Project has set the bar for New York dance programming incredibly high with its fantastic PLATFORM 2010 program, in which two remarkable artists – Ralph Lemon and Juliette Mapp – were invited to curate a series of new, commissioned performances for presentation at Danspace. Ralph Lemon has already presented most of his excellent i get lost program, and now it’s on to Juliette Mapp’s Back to NYC. The brochure for the latter just hit mailboxes today, and the line-up is absolutely terrific.

See the full list of performances here – we especially recommend Performa 09 artist Deborah Hay’s first solo performance in several years, No Time to Fly, a new work by David Thomson called 1959, that features text by writers including Glenn Ligon and Clarinda Mac Low, and Paige Martin’s mysterious PANORAMA, the publicity materials for which feature nothing but a campy 1970s family portrait and the instructions “Intended for mature audiences. Photo-taking allowed. Please arrive by 7:45 PM.” I have no idea what this means, but I’ll be there!

And we’re very excited that Performa 07 artist and fountain of wisdom Elaine Summers will be featured in not one, not two, but THREE events! From March 18-20 Danspace will present a retrospective evening of some of Elaine’s multimedia works–including the 1969 landmark Crow’s Nest, which was originally made for the Guggenheim Museum and features a beautiful score by Deep Listening pioneer Pauline Oliveros. Then, on March 20, there will be a two-part conversation event at the New Museum–the first part featuring Elaine in conversation with Pauline Oliveros, and the second part a roundtable with Elaine and several of the other Back to NYC artists. Do not miss this event–Elaine is an absolute delight in on-stage conversations and panel discussions, and has so much to share with contemporary artists of a younger generation continuing to work in New York. During Performa 07, Elaine participated in an on-stage conversation with Meredith Monk after one of the Dance After Choreography film screenings, and the two of them together were so much fun several audience members suggested that they get their own television show!

Elaine Summers is a true treasure in the New York dance and performance world, and Juliette Mapp and Danspace Project deserve enormous credit for programming her work along with the work of the many other outstanding artists in this series. Keep it up!

–Lana Wilson

Image: Elaine Summers, Fantastic Gardens, 1964

Don’t miss an evening of live performances at Starlite Lounge! 

Artists scheduled to perform: Ryan McNamara, Lucas Michael, Fletchin’ Gretchen, Black Waterfall and Bobby Service, Kalup Linzy, Michael Mahalchick, Dynasty Handbag, RJ Supa, and more…

March 14, 2010 @ 4pm

The Starlite Lounge
1084 Bergen St. (at Nostrand Ave.)
Brooklyn, NY

www.davidlouisfierman.com

Congratulations to the Performa artists represented in 2010, the Whitney Biennial that opens this Thursday, February 25!

David Adamo
The Bruce High Quality Foundation
Sharon Hayes
Babette Mangolte
Kelly Nipper
Aki Sasamoto
Marianne Vitale

Plus, the video above of Performa 09 artist Aki Sasamoto was made by Performa TV producer Pierce Jackson, who was commissioned to make all of the videos for this year’s Whitney Biennial.

Students from RoseLee Goldberg’s History of Contemporary Art and New Media class at New York University respond to the exhibition 100 Years, on view through April 5 at P.S.1:

Gillian Young

One of the works now on view at P.S.1 as part of 100 Years (version #2, ps1, nov 2009), an exhibition conceived with Performa, is Yayoi Kusama’s 1968 film Flower Orgy . Situated in a row of black televisions—windows to the fantastic, experimental world of 1960s performance—Kusama’s images of polka-dotted bodies and multicolored flowers materialize and fade into one another on the screen: a dizzy, sensuous memory of her live orgies. The museum she pronounced dead in 1969 today endeavors to keep her work plugged in and breathing. 100 Years is a timely response to the problem of curating performance art—a practice, which, over the last century, has resisted the paradigm of collection and display. An archive constructed out of documents and articles stapled to the gallery walls, video monitors, projections, and headsets, 100 Years offers a sense of history to a viewing public increasingly engaged with live performance in the museum setting.

Riccardo Giacconi

At the entrance of 100 Years (version #2, ps1, nov 2009), exhibition currently on view at P.S.1 through April 5, 2010, visitors can read an introduction explicitly stating that the show is “intended as an archive for students, scholars, and enthusiasts of the history of performance art.” Artists participating in the performance art biennial Performa 09 were invited to contribute to the archive by “adding performances, happenings, actions, and gestures that they considered influential to their own artistic careers.” What is the status of an exhibition that defines itself as an archive? At first, as a visitor I got puzzled by the statement. Was I supposed to follow a path which had been prepared for me, or was I supposed to wander around as in a library, drawing my own experience of the (sizeable) archive from my personal interests and intents?

Joe Elliott

The way finding within P.S.1 is not completely intuitive at first glance. Once I arrived at the third floor, it was by no means obvious exactly where the 100 Years exhibition began. But once I located the main room of the show—which featured enormous projections of work by Rebecca Horn on all four walls and Christian Marclay’s installation of almost 3000 records covering the floor—it became clear that this room acted as an epic center for the entire rest of the exhibition, which radiated outward from it. The atmosphere of the room was grand, setting a precedent for the overwhelming power of a new era in contemporary art. And once I realized the geometry of the exhibition, it quickly became clear that a chronological timeline was organized in a clockwise direction. In keeping with the dizzying effects that live performance has had on the art world, the graphics and information presented in 100 Years were dense and overwhelming, to say the least. Once I stepped into the show it took me at least ten minutes just to focus—it was sensory overload. I think this slightly disorienting feeling actually added to the experience of the exhibition as a whole, as the history of performance art itself has always been mostly unchartered.

Lauren Chinault

Charting the development of performance art over the years, the sheer diversity of subject matter, imagery, and techniques that have been used by artists is absolutely incredible. It has truly affected my psyche and the way in which I view movement and personal expression on a daily basis. Two films in 100 Years that I found particularly powerful were Sigalit Landau’s Barbed Hula and Guido van der Werve’s Nummer Acht (Everything is Going to be Alright). Landau’s film opens with a simple title screen and then moves into a shot of a nude woman standing on a beach, hula-hooping with a ring of barbed wire. The motion is slowed and the skin on the woman’s body ripples, becoming increasingly punctured as the hoop encircles her. In the background, the waves move as rhythmically and incessantly onto the shore as the barbs hitting her flesh. Van der Werve’s film has a similarly beautiful simplicity, tinged with this same possibility of pain amidst perseverance. The video features a distant view of a man walking across a frozen body of water as an enormous ice-breaking ship splits the ice in his wake. This journey continues throughout the duration of the film, with only the sound heard that of the ice being crushed in the background. I know that I have a general aesthetic attraction to simple images that are compounded with powerfully psychological undertones, a quality very apparent in both of these works of art.

Beatrice Choi

“Here and there, sick lamplight through window glass taught us to distrust the deceitful mathematics of our perishing eyes. I cried, ‘The scent, the scent alone is enough for our beasts.’”-F.T. Marinetti, The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism, 1909

In one hundred years, the history of performance art presents itself, but is not encapsulated by the limits of that range of time; time serves as a platform, but it does not bind the art that springs forth from it. P.S.1 worked in collaboration with the non-profit art organization Performa to present the exhibition 100 Years (version #2, nov 2009), which ranges from Futurism to the uprising of performance video and new media in the arts. It presents a general timeline of the development of the field even as it invites the audience to challenge the idea of a streamlined, uniform narrative of time. The video of performances of Oskar Schlemmer’s Das figurale Kabinett and Triadic Ballet, both from 1922, has been scored with music recorded posthumously. What we have, then, is not only the genre-breaking art that combines ballet with futuristic costumery and theater, but also the nonlinear inclusion of an avant-garde musical composition and the manipulation of the new color film. This is a product that may arguably stand without a singular point of origin, even as the placard below the video monitor wields the date of the year 1922.

Amanda Dall’Asta

While looking for Alan Kaprow’s Happenings in the “1930-50 and the United States” section of 100 Years, I was delighted to run into a text referring to Lucio Fontana Concetti Spaziali. Then, in the second part of the show, I was captivated by Marina Abramovic’s Rest Energy (1980), Mike Kelly and Paul McCarthy horror Heidi (1992), and Francesco Vezzoli’s Right You Are (If You Think You Are) (2007). People can choose what to look at, and the selection is very wide, yet it felt like a starting point: for scholars to find out new perspectives about their studies, and for museum goers to be captured by a kind of art where performers and audience live together in the moment of creating. I enjoyed the simplicity of the wall texts, because the subject does not need a lot of embellishment—the innovation and surprises are all visible in the performances displayed.

Soyeun Kim

At 100 Years, I can look around and see the progress of performance art. Much early performance revolved around classical forms such as ballet. After the announcement of the Futurist Manifesto, performance gradually developed into its contemporary state. As technology develops, there are more ways of expressing artists’ ideas and varying their scale, even extending them into the virtual realm. Through 100 Years, even though some work remains as difficult to understand as ever, I can see and understand the flow of performance art from one movement to the next, and have more comprehensive expectations for the new performance I see today.

Julia Mechtler

I really enjoyed Francesco Vezzoli’s performance Right You Are (If You Think You Are) (2007), which was presented during Performa 07 at the Guggenheim Museum. The performance restaged Luigi Pirandello’s play from 1917, and revolves around the dark fascination with a celebrity. The characters in the performance were played by actors including Cate Blanchett, Natalie Portman, and Abigail Breslin. Throughout the performance, the characters investigate and dissect another character not present, Signora Ponza. It is interesting to see how the characters discuss this woman who they have never met, obsessively dissecting her attributes and identity, reflecting how society today hyper-analyzes the character of so many celebrities. At the end, Cate Blanchett, revealed to be the mysterious woman who is the object of so much speculation, appears and says, “I am whoever you want me to be.”

Alexa Halaby

During the 60s and 70s, performance art had a huge boom, with hundreds of “Happenings” taking place all over. Artists saw the movement as a means of taking their art directly to a public forum. For those of us who were not alive in that time, we have a little more difficulty understanding why that time and performance art history in general is of major importance. Over the years performance art has become more and more important and influential, but there is still darkness in most people’s minds about the subject. This exhibition is a wonderful experience for all types of people, from performance lovers and art world cognoscenti to the general public. The journey through the galleries almost makes you feel as though you are part of a performance yourself—even more so if you go on a Saturday, on which there is always a live happening taking place at 4 p.m.

Marc Arthur

During a panel discussion on documentation and performance art, RoseLee Goldberg said, “We’re looking at a medium that needs a new approach in terms of history. Yes, it is documentation; no, I very often wasn’t there; but most of the time, very few other people were there either.” Simply reading a wall text, looking at a photograph, or watching a video doesn’t replicate the live experience of a performance. But it does present evidence, or at least a starting point in solving the mystery of the live act. If there is to be a new approach to understanding performance art through history, we must first become literate in the language of documentation. This exhibition is the perfect starting point.

Image: Guido van der Werve’s Nummer Acht (Everything is Going to be Alright), 2007

PKNY 9
PECHA KUCHA NY THIS SATURDAY!

SPEAKERS:
David Adjaye / Stan Allen / Iwan Baan / Craig Dykers / Steven Holl / Florian Idenburg & Jing Liu / Sam Jacob / Paul Lewis / Zachary Lieberman / Gregg Pasquarelli / Jesse Reiser / Stefan Sagmeister

It only took seconds to destroy so many bright hopes and dreams in Haiti. The 280 city Pecha Kucha network is joining with Architecture for Humanity to help rebuild Haiti 20 seconds at a time. Join us around the the world on 20th February for Global Pecha Kucha Day for Haiti. 20 seconds, 20 images, 200 cities, 2000 presentations, 200,000 people – with the aim to raise $1,000,000 for rebuilding Haiti. All proceeds go to Architecture for Humanity’s Non-Profit organization and will be used for building facilities in Haiti.

LOCATION:   The Great Hall of The Cooper Union
7 E 7th street, entrance at Peter Cooper Park

TIME:   4:00 – 7:00pm

DATE:   This Saturday, February 20th

COST:   $15 min, $20 suggested donation. (Tickets at the door). All proceeds go to Architecture for Humanity’s Non-Profit organization and will be used for building facilities in Haiti.

Hosted by Marc McQuade

More info on their website: www.IHPKNY.com

L’Homme assis dans le couloir
(The Man Sitting in the Corridor)

When: Feb 19-21 – 7:30pm/Friday & Saturday – 5:00pm/Sunday
Where: Baryshnikov Arts Center – 450 W. 37th St – www.bacnyc.org

Based on the novella by Marguerite Duras, choreographer Razerka Ben Sadia-Lavant has created this dance theater piece that reveals “what the story does not tell us” of love’s erotic powers and inevitable pain. Performed by Sarah Crépi. Accompanied by text read by Jacques Dutronc and Tal Beit-Halachmi in French with English subtites.

Tickets: $20
www.smarttix.com

Following the excitement of Performa 09, I would like to urge you to visit an extraordinary exhibition now on view at P.S.1, 100 Years, that brings the history of performance art to life in extraordinary ways. Organized by P.S.1 and Performa, 100 Years is too important to miss; it is an instant introduction to the history of performance art from Futurism to the present and provides a visual and vital timeline of material never before gathered in the same exhibition space.

Conceived as a “living exhibition” of documentation which will continue to grow without limit into the future, 100 Years shows the extraordinary variety of “live” performance that shaped the history of 20th century art. Reprints of Futurist and Dada Manifestos are seen side by side with photographs of Oskar Schlemmer’s Triadic Ballet, films of Francis Picabia’s Relâche, and Mary Wigman’s Hexentanz in the first room, while unforgettable films transferred to video by Yves Klein, Carolee Schneemann, Anna Halprin, Yoko Ono, and Yayoi Kosama can be seen in the second. The exhibition follows a timeline that includes the work of Marina Abramovi?, Vito Acconci, Matthew Barney, Tania Bruguera, Adrien Piper, and Michael Smith through to the most current material by Allora & Calzadilla, Sigalit Landau, and Ryan Trecartin. Also included is a special space devoted to Electronic Arts Intermix, the pioneering resource for video and media art that began collecting and preserving artists’ video in 1971, with a selection from their archives entitled 45 Years of Performance Video from EAI, that features seminal works by Joan Jonas, Stuart Sherman, and Lynda Benglis.

Groundbreaking performances from this extraordinary history are represented by films, videos, photographs, documents, and audio works, providing an educational opportunity for art historians, critics and students — entire dissertations could be written here! — and for all those interested in the history of twentieth and twenty-first century art and the many threads that have shaped and continue to shape its development. Given the anticipated explosion of performance art in galleries and museums that will dominate New York City in the coming year, there is no better introduction to understanding this remarkable material than 100 Years at P.S. 1.

100 Years is on view until April 5, 2010. It is an important and revelatory exhibition which we urge you to visit so that you may immerse yourself in this critical and inspiring history.

–Posted by RoseLee Goldberg

100 Years (version #2, ps1, nov 2009)

On view at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center until April 5, 2010
Hours: 12 pm-6 pm, Thursday through Monday

Organized by P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center and Performa
Curated by Klaus Biesenbach and RoseLee Goldberg

Directions:
P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center is located at 22-25 Jackson Avenue at 46th Avenue in Long Island City, Queens, across the Queensboro Bridge from midtown Manhattan. It is easily accessible by bus and subway. Traveling by subway, visitors should take either the E or V to 23 Street-Ely Avenue (note that the V does not run on weekends); the 7 to 45 Road-Courthouse Square; or the G to Court Square or 21 Street-Van Alst. Visitors may also take the Q67 bus to Jackson and 46th Avenues or the B61 to Jackson Avenue.

100 Years was made possible by the Annual Exhibition Fund of P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center with generous support from the Julia Stoschek Foundation.

Impossible Geometries
When: Sat, February 20, 8:00pm
Where: 177 Livingston Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201

A benefit party for the new home of Triple Canopy, Light Industry, and The Public School • $5-20, pay-as-you-wish • The evening will begin at 8 p.m. with readings by Ed Park and Lynne Tillman. Next, there will be a rare stateside presentation of Lis Rhodes’s Light Music (1975). Rhodes’s double projection is a seminal exploration of 16-mm optical sound—the on-screen abstraction is “read” by the projector as audio—and a classic of British expanded cinema. The “Anti-Matter Cabaret” of Ambergris and a set by the avant-pop ensemble Skeletons will follow, as will DJ sets by Josh Kline and Gary Murphy & Tim Lokiec. • Very special thanks to Katie Dixon and The Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, Sébastien Venuat, and Brooklyn Brewery.

http://www.177livingston.org

http://www.lightindustry.org

There is still time to go see Xenakis’ drawings at the Drawing Center and then go hear his music live at the Morgan Library and other places around town over the next month – many  great opportunities to experience his work in more ways than one!

Step One:  See the drawings at the Drawing Center in Soho
35 Wooster Street between Broome and Grand Streets
Gallery hours are Wednesday, 12pm – 6pm, Thursday, 12pm – 8pm, and Friday – Sunday, 12pm – 6pm (closed Mondays and Tuesdays).

Step Two: Go see some live music!

February 5, 6:45–8:30pm
Concert by JACK Quartet of Xenakis’s complete String Quartets
The Morgan Library & Museum, 225 Madison Avenue

February 6, 7pm and February 13, 20, and 27, 2–8pm
Daniel Teige performs selections of Xenakis’s electronic music
Diapason Gallery, 882 Third Avenue, 10th Floor, Brooklyn

February 21, 3–5:30pm
Iannis Xenakis: The Percussion Music, panel discussion and performance
Frederick Loewe Theatre – NYU Steinhardt Percussion Program, 35 West 4th Street

February 28, 8pm
Xenakis and Japan, a music/dance event produced by Electronic Music Foundation, choreography and production design by Luca Veggetti
Judson Church, 55 Washington Square South

March 16, 7pm
French Transmission, a concert by the Montreal-based ensemble
Elebash Hall at the Graduate Center of City University of New York, 365 Fifth Avenue

- Posted by Esa