Staff
Performa Staff
RoseLee Goldberg, Director and Curator
Esa Nickle, General Manager/Producer
Defne Ayas, Curator
Tairone Bastien, Curator
Mark Beasley, Curator
Lana Wilson, Publications and Publicity
Shelley Gross, Administrative Assistant
Curatorial Intern, Persis Singh
Press/Marketing Intern, Kyle Ganson
Additional Staff for Performa 09
Mike Skinner, Production Manager, ARUP
Emily Krell, Production, Music
Lyra Kilston, Web Editor
Sherrard Bostwick, Education
Lillie de Armon, Production Assistant
Manuel Scheiwiller, Production Assistant
Joan Healey, Production Assistant
Mehdi Brit, Production Assistant
Madeleine Kate McGowan, Web and Production Assistant
Georg Scherlin, Videography and Editing
Ashley Prymas, Marketing and Sponsorship
Grace Kim, Special Projects
Joanne Cheung, Marketing & Press Intern
Ariel Patterson, Marketing & Press Intern
Darius Miksys, Biennial Intern, Another Project
Griffin Frazen, Architecture & Design Assistant
Emma McCormick-Goodhart, Research Intern
Jess Wilcox, Research Intern
David Everitt-Howe, Research Intern
Peter Staples, Intern
Paula Court, Archival Photographer
Fitz & Co., Public Relations
APFEL, Design
POKE, Website
STAFF BIOS
Roselee Goldberg, Founding Director & Curator
RoseLee Goldberg, art historian, critic, curator and author whose book Performance Art from Futurism to the Present first published in 1979, pioneered the study of performance art. A graduate of the Courtauld Institute of Art (London University), she was director of the Royal College of Art Gallery in London and curator at The Kitchen in New York. In 1990 she organized ‘Six Evenings of Performance’ as part of the acclaimed exhibition ‘High and Low: Modern Art and Popular Culture’ at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Author of Performance: Live Art Since 1960 and Laurie Anderson), she is a frequent contributor to Artforum and other magazines. In 2001-02 Goldberg originated and produced Logic of the Birds , a full length multimedia production by Iranian born artist Shirin Neshat in collaboration with singer Sussan Deyhim, which premiered at the Lincoln Center Summer Festival in 2002 and toured to the Walker Art Institute in Minneapolis and to Artangel in London. RoseLee Goldberg has lectured extensively at The Architectural Association in London, California Institute of the Arts, Yale, Princeton and Tate Modern, and has taught at New York University since 1987.RoseLeeGoldberg.org
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Esa Nickle, General Manager/Producer
Esa Nickle joined the Performa team in May 2005 as the Biennial Coordinator of the Performa 05 biennial and has since expanded her role as the line producer of Performa commissions, international tours and special events. During her 16 years working in the field she has managed large scale public art events, art education programs, and curatorial projects for the city agencies such as the City of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and the Greenwich + Docklands International Festival in London. Since arriving in New York in 1998 Esa has worked with public art consultant Joyce Pomeroy Schwartz, MTA Arts for Transit, managed White Box, a non-profit alternative contemporary arts space in Chelsea and curated several exhibitions and programs on sound art and experimental music. Esa studied the Sociology of Art at Indiana University and Art History at the City University, London.Defne Ayas, Curator
Defne Ayas is a curator and educator split between New York and Shanghai. Since 2004, Ayas worked extensively as a consortium liaison for Performa05, and Performa07, and since then, continues to present performances and performance-related programs with an international roster of artists, curators, and critical thinkers. Prior to joining our organization, Ayas worked at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, where she coordinated the museum’s educational, public and new media programming, including inter-disciplinary roundtables with leaders in the fields of visual arts and architecture for the Museum as a Hub initiative. Split between New York and Shanghai, where she is a Director of Arthub Asia, Ayas also serves as a curatorial advisor to Artissima, Turin; 8th Gwangju Biennial; Artist Pension Trust, and CCA in Kabul, Afghanistan. Ayas completed De Appel Curatorial Training Program in Amsterdam and received her Masters Degree from the ITP at New York University.
Tairone Bastien, Curator
Tairone Bastien has been a curator with Performa since 2005. He works closely with the consortium and with our international artists to develop performances, installations, panels, and exhibitions as part of both the Performa Commissions and Performa Premieres programs. Bastien founded PERFORMA TV in 2007, a platform to commission and broadcast artist-driven content on television and online. Most recently Bastien c0-curated The Lust Weekend for Performa 09, a series of performances, talks, and exhibitions inspired by the Futurist dancer, writer and activist Valentine de Saint Point. In the off years, Bastien curates and organizes Performa’s projects, panels and events, and works independently, curating exhibitions at various non-profits and commercial galleries in New York and abroad. Born in Vancouver, Canada, Bastien received a MA in Curating Contemporary Art from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, and a BA in Art History from the University of British Columbia.
Mark Beasley, Curator
Mark Beasley is a curator, writer and artist based in New York. Prior to Performa, he worked at the New York based public art organization Creative Time. His recent projects include the first public art quadrennial Plot/09: This World & Nearer Ones; Hey Hey Glossolalia: exhibiting the voice, and Javier Tellez critically acclaimed film A Letter on the Blind. As an independent curator he organized the international touring show Electric Earth: Film and Video from Britain, for the British Council; Infra thin Projects with Book Works, London and Sudden White (after London), at the Royal Academy of Art. Between 2004-2005 he was the Stanley Picker Research Fellow in Fine Art at Kingston University, London and has contributed articles and essays to numerous exhibition catalogues, radio plays and journals including Dot Dot Dot, Art Forum and frieze. He is represented by MOT International gallery in London. He received his BA Hons in Fine Art from Bath University, UK and an MA in Curating Contemporary Art from the Royal College of Art, London.
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Lana Wilson, Publications and Publicity
Lana Wilson handles publications, publicity, and film programming at Performa. She organized the Dance After Choreography film program at Anthology Film Archives as part of Performa 07, which subsequently toured to the Tanzquartier Wien (Vienna), the V-dance International Video Dance Festival (Tel Aviv), and the Jerusalem International Film Festival. She is also the Film Programmer for the Furman Film Series in Great Neck, NY, and was a member of the jury for Lincoln Center’s 2008 Dance on Camera Film Festival. As a dancer, Lana has performed with Michael Bodel, Aki Sasamoto, and Lily Skove (SkoveWorks), among others. She holds a BA in Film Studies and Dance from Wesleyan University, where she graduated with honors.Virginie Bobin, Curatorial Assistant
Virginie Bobin joined the curatorial team last January to dedicate herself to Performa 09’s projects and artists. Prior to this, she had interned at several French museums and galleries. She graduated from the Ecole du Magasin’s international Curatorial Program in Grenoble in 2008, and with honors from the Ecole du Louvre in Paris with a Masters in Museum Studies and Contemporary Art History in 2007. She also works as an independent curator, notably as one half of the bo-ring collective (with Julia Klaering, www.bo-ring.net) and has published several texts in catalogues and magazines.
Jennifer Liese, Publications Editor
Jennifer Liese edits exhibition catalogues and books for museums, galleries, and publishers including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Queens Museum of Art, MIT List Visual Arts Center, Haswellediger, Phaidon, and Zone Books. She is an editor of Cabinet magazine and a contributing editor of BOMB and has served as managing editor of Artforum and editor of Provincetown Arts. Her writing and reviews have appeared in Cabinet, Artforum, Bookforum, BOMB, and TenbyTen. Liese has worked in curatorial departments at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. She has lectured at Rhode Island School of Design, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, from which she holds a Master’s degree in modern art history, theory, and criticism.Paula Court, Archival Photography
Paula Court lives and works in New York City.Georg Scherlin, Videography and Editing
Artist and time traveller. Lives and works in Vienna and Berlin. For more information visit gorg.kontxt.net
