By Zoë Lescaze 2/12 6:46pm

conferences

The after party. (The New York Observer)

Keeping It Surreal: Melvin Van Peebles, DJ Spooky, More at Performa’s ‘Black Surrealism’ Conference

“Surreal” is a slippery word. No longer used to refer exclusively to the art movement that began in the 1920s, the term is tossed around as a synonym for “dreamlike” or “bizarre.” It has been so stripped of its subversive content that reality television has even co-opted it (see The Surreal Life, which documented a bunch of has-been celebrities living together—there were meltdowns, but they were nothing like Dalí’s clocks). Read More

By Michael H. Miller 9/12/12 5:57pm

Dance

Sarah Michelson, "Devotion," 2011. Photo: Paula Court. (Courtesy Whitney.org)

Performa to Examine the Art World’s Fascination With Dance

On Sept. 17, Performa will present “Why Dance in the Art World?” The event explores the “history and future of the art world’s interest in dance.” Jennifer Homans, author of Apollo’s Angels: A History of Ballet, will introduce the topic, followed by a panel discussion with choreographer Ralph Lemon, Artforum‘s David Velasco, MoMA curator Jenny Schlenzka, moderated by Performa’s founder, RoseLee Goldberg. Read More

By Rozalia Jovanovic 5/18/12 1:50pm

Benefits

RoseLee Goldberg at the Performa Benefit with Mike Kelly print in background (Courtesy Rozalia Jovanovic)

Performa Hosts Sparkling First Benefit Auction

“I tell you how much money to spend, and you spend it,” said Sara Friedlander standing on a podium in a gold-sequin skirt and a jean shirt tied at her waist. “It’s like I tell my husband.” Ms. Friedlander, a post-war and contemporary art specialist at Christie’s, was moonlighting last night as an auctioneer at Performa’s first benefit auction.

The benefit for Performa, which organizes a performance art biennial in New York, was held at the Flag Art Foundation’s Chelsea gallery, which was filled with sun for almost the entire evening as guests sampled porcini mushroom pastry puffs and endive spears filled with crab salad while surveying the works at auction by artists like Mike Kelley, Laurie Simmons, Christian Marclay and Shirin Neshat, among many others. A black crown fashioned from black leather and rhinestone studded stars, by Rashaad Newsome, sparkled in the sunlight streaming in from the balcony. A dancer with the Trisha Brown Company said he had bid on the Marclay piece, a torn corner of a page from a comic book. Read More

3/06/12 4:35pm

Performance

7 Photos

"The Haunting" (with Raphael Castoriano, Charles Kessler, Ju Hae Park, Helene Safdie, Joey Syta), 2012.

The Kid Stays in the Picture: Interviewing Ryan McNamara, and Becoming an Artwork

It is all but unheard of for an artist to become a fixture in the New York art world without having had any solo gallery exhibitions, the normal route to becoming well known. The artist Ryan McNamara, however, has managed to do this. Much of his production so far has consisted of short-lived performances that happened and were gone so swiftly that his reputation rests mostly on documentation produced after the fact. These performances have taken place in disparate locations ranging from gay bars to the Louis Vuitton store, to the woods outside the Watermill Center on Long Island. For one piece, Make Ryan a Dancer, part of MoMA PS1’s “Greater New York” survey in 2010, he spent six months taking dance lessons in the museum, a conflation of durational performance (he actually was learning how to dance) and practicality (he actually wanted to learn how to dance). His first solo exhibition in a gallery, currently at Elizabeth Dee, is both a reference to and an extension of his career to date. Read More

11/21/11 2:14pm

Performa 11

Mr. McLaren. Courtesy Performa

Who Will Win the Malcolm McLaren Award?

Tonight, at the grand finale of Performa, one of the artists that participated in the performance art biennial will be the recipient of the Malcolm Award, in honor of Malcom McLaren.

McLaren was the manager of the New York Dolls and the Sex Pistols and also ran a clothing store for which he never quite settled on a permanent name (it was called Let It Rock, Too Fast to Live Too Young to Die, SEX, Seditionaries and World’s End, respectively). There were other things McLaren accomplished, of course, but those details seem to be the most performative. Read More

11/21/11 11:35am

Performa 11

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Ragnar Kjartansson’s 12-Hour Performance Blissfully Leaves Mozart on Repeat

Ragnar Kjartansson’s performance Bliss had reached the halfway point and the actors were tired. They had been singing the final aria of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro–about four lines and two minutes of music–for six hours and they had six more to go. A conductor stood at the foot of the stage, instructing the 11 actors and 15-piece orchestra with exaggerated movements, thrashing his entire body and flailing his arms high in the air. He was drinking from a glass of red wine. “During the 12 hours,” the program thankfully said, ”the audience is welcome to wander in and out of the performance.” Read More