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| Allora & Calzadilla Stop, Repair, Prepare: Variations on Ode to Joy, No.1, 2008 Modified Bechstein piano 40 x 65 x 84 5/8 inches (101.5 x 165 x 215 cm) Installation View: Gladstone Gallery, New York Photo: David Regen Copyright Allora & Calzadilla |
Wesleyan University's Center for the Arts, Art & Art History Department,
and Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance (ICPP) present art exhibition debut: "Performance Now" Friday, Sept. 7 through Sunday, Dec. 9 in the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery, Tuesday - Sunday from noon to 5 pm.
Opening Reception: Tuesday, Sept. 11, 5 to 7 pm; Gallery Talk by curator RoseLee Goldberg: 5:30 pm.
“Performance Now: The FirstDecade of the New Century”
Curated by RoseLee Goldberg
Co-produced by Independent Curators International (ICI) and Performa
Exhibition on view:Friday, September 7 – Sunday, December 9, 2012
Opening Reception:Tuesday, September 11, 2012 from 5pm to 7pm
Gallery Talk with RoseLee Goldberg: Tuesday, September 11, 2012at 5:30pm
Lecture by RoseLee Goldberg: Saturday, November 17, 2012 at 2pm
“Performance Now” is a selection of works by 19 artists froma vast repository of new performance from around the world since 2000, a periodthat has witnessed an exponential growth in the field. More than a centuryafter the Italian Futurists insisted on an increased engagement with their audiencesand solicited artists of every discipline to join their cause, performance byvisual artists has become central to our understanding of the development ofcontemporary art ideas and sensibilities.
Bringing together some of the most significant practitionerstoday, “Performance Now” surveys critical and experimental currents inperformance internationally featuring works by Marina Abramović, WilliamKentridge, Clifford Owens, Spartacus Chetwynd and Jerome Bel, amongothers. Exploringthe ephemerality of live performance and how this is captured by artists andtransformed into new work that contains the power and content of the original,together the selected works are an indication of the extent to which visualartists use performance as part of their creative process; how that processproduces objects, installations, video, or photography interchangeably; and howthese mediums have been enlivened by the demands of recording performance ininnovative ways.
With performance art departments recently being establishedin many major museums throughout the world and performance recognized as one ofthe most significant artistic forms of the 21st century, thisexhibition provides a window onto these important developments. “PerformanceNow” is a series of ongoingexhibitions designed to introduce some of the most exciting projects ofperformance from 2000 to the present and to generate discussion about thehistory of performance art. The material is selected from a publication of thesame name, “Performance Now,” by RoseLee Goldberg, which will be published byThames and Hudson in 2014.
ARTISTS
Marina Abramović, Jennifer Alloraand Guillermo Calzadilla, Jerome Bel, Spartacus Chetwynd, Nikhil Chopra,Nathalie Djurberg, Omer Fast, Christian Jankowski, Jesper Just, WilliamKentridge, Ragnar Kjartansson, Liz Magic Laser, Kalup Linzy, Kelly Nipper,Clifford Owens, Laurie Simmons, Ryan Trecartin
The debut of the exhibition at Wesleyancoincides with the University’s new Institutefor Curatorial Practice in Performance (ICPP), a post-graduate certificateprogram that is the first of its kind in the United States. “ICPP brings artists, presenters, managersand other arts professionals together with Wesleyan faculty and some of thefinest performance curators working today. Our students develop a responsive curatorial practice that takes thebest from the fields of visual and performing arts. We knew that “PerformanceNow” would be an important show to integrate into this year’s ICPP curriculum,while also resonating with community members and many of our undergraduate andgraduate arts students interested in exploring contemporary performancepractices and their social and historical contexts,” said Pamela Tatge,Director of Wesleyan’s Center for the Arts and Managing Director of ICPP.
At Wesleyan, the exhibition alsoextends to a film series, selected by Performa film curator Lana Wilson, a 2005 graduate of theUniversity (see below for film series details). Other Wesleyan alumni workingin performance art, including Liz MagicLaser ’03 (one of the artists featured in the “Performance Now” exhibit), Aki Sasamoto ’04, Arturo Vidich ’03, and DanielleMysliwiec ’98, will be panelists at a free seminar moderated by Greta Hartenstein ’11 in the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Galleryduring the University’s Homecoming/Family Weekend on Saturday, October 20, 2012at 2pm.
ABOUT THE CURATOR: ROSELEE GOLDBERG
Ms. Goldberg’s seminal study, “Performance Art: From Futurism to thePresent” (first published in 1979 and now in its third edition) is regarded asthe leading text for understanding the development of the genre and has beentranslated into more languages (including Chinese, Croatian, French, Japanese,Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish) than any other book of its kind. When directorof the Royal College of Art (RCA) Gallery in London, Ms. Goldberg established aprogram that pioneered an integrative approach to curating exhibitions,performance, and symposia, directly involving the various departments of theRCA in all aspects of the exhibitions program. As curator at the Kitchen in NewYork she continued to advocate for multi-disciplinary practices to have equalprominence by establishing the exhibition space, a video viewing room, and aperformance series. Most recently, her vision in the creation of Performa hasset a precedent for performance art that is now impacting museum programmingand diverse audiences across the U.S. and abroad.
Admission is free.
PERFORMANCE NOWFILM SERIES
French Conceptual Dance
Thursday, September20, 2012 at 7pm
Powell Family Cinema,Center for Film Studies
FREE
In the 1990s, a newwave of highly conceptual choreographers emerged in France. Now, these artistsare at the forefront of avant-garde European dance and performance. Thisprogram presents two very different films by choreographers who came out ofthis wave:
Boris Charmatz &Dimitri Chamblas—“Les Disparates” (1994)
A delightful, beautifully shot exploration of the possibilities for fragmentingdance through editing, from bar to boathouse and back again.
Jerome Bel—“Veronique Doisneau” (2004)
A ballet dancerappears alone on stage at the Paris Opera House, narrating her life’s historyas a dancer in what will be the final performance of her career.
The Films of Jesper Just
Thursday, October 25,2012 at 7pm
Powell Family Cinema,Center for Film Studies
Introduced byPerforma Film and Dance Curator
Lana Wilson '05 withreception to follow
FREE
Commissioned byPerforma to create his first performance for the Performa 05 biennial, Danishartist Jesper Just used three-dimensional technology to create “True Love isYet to Come” (2005), an opera exploring the subject of love through anintriguing all-male cast whose emotional nakedness is underscored by pop musicand a noir sensibility. This program will showcase the documentation of theperformance of “True Love” alongside Mr. Just's “No Man is an Island” (2002)and “Bliss and Heaven” (2004).
OtherWorlds: Daria Martin and Laurie Simmons
Thursday, November15, 2012 at 7pm
Powell Family Cinema,Center for Film Studies
FREE
This program pairs films made by two artists who breakdown the boundaries between dance, visual art, and music, in work that shares ahighly aestheticized exterior belying more complex and disturbing content. Theelegant work of British artist DariaMartin—“In the Palace” (2000), “Loneliness and the Modern Pentathlon”(2004-5), and “Harpstrings & Lava”(2007)—presents the human body as a mechanized and abstract containerfor rich emotions, composed with the eye of a painter for two-dimensionalsurfaces and the mind of a filmmaker for visceral three-dimensionalperspectives. Laurie Simmons,best known for her large-scale puppet-based photographs from the 1980s, madeher directorial debut with “The Musicof Regret” (2006), a three-act musical that uses puppets to enact talesof ambition, disappointment, love, loss, and regret, suggesting the darker sideof domesticity, and the fragile ecology of everyday life. Total running time 78minutes.
DariaMartin—“In thePalace” (2000), 16mm film transferred to DVD, 7 min
DariaMartin—“Lonelinessand the Modern Pentathlon” (2004-5), 16mm film transferred to DVD, 18 min
DariaMartin—“Harpstrings& Lava” (2007), 16mm film transferred to DVD, 13 min
LaurieSimmons—“The Musicof Regret” (2006), 35mm film transferred to HDCam, 40 min
CREDITS
“Performance Now” is produced by Independent CuratorsInternational (ICI), New York, and Performa, New York. The curator for theexhibition is RoseLee Goldberg, Artistic Director and founder of Performa. Theexhibition and tour are made possible, in part, by grants from the Horace W.Goldsmith Foundation, and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; theICI Board of Trustees; and donors to ICI's Access Fund.
At Wesleyan University, “Performance Now” is co-sponsored by the Center for theArts, the Department of Art and Art History, and the Institute for CuratorialPractice in Performance. The“Performance Now” Film Series is co-sponsored by Wesleyan University's Centerfor Film Studies.
ABOUT PERFORMA
Founded by RoseLee Goldberg in2004, Performa is the leading organization dedicated to exploring the criticalrole of live performance in the history of 20th century art and to encouragingnew directions in performance for the 21st century. Performa launched NewYork’s first performance biennial, Performa 05, in 2005, followed by Performa07 (2007), Performa 09 (2009), and recently, Performa 11 (2011).
ABOUT ICI
Independent Curators International (ICI) connects emerging andestablished curators, artists, and institutions to forge international networksand generate new forms of collaboration through the production of exhibitions,events, publications, and curatorial training. Headquartered in New York, theorganization provides public access to the people and practices that are key tocurrent developments in curating and exhibition-making around the world,inspiring fresh ways of seeing and contextualizing contemporary art. Since itwas established in 1975, ICI has worked with over 1,000 curators and 3,700artists from 47 countries worldwide.
Since 2010, 15 ICI exhibitions have beenpresented by 70 venues in 23 countries profiling the work of over 370 artistsworldwide; 110 curators and artists from the U.S and abroad have contributed toICI’s talks programs, online journal, and conferences; and 121 curators from 24countries and 14 U.S. states have participated in the Curatorial Intensives,ICI’s short-course professional training programs.
ABOUTWESLEYAN UNIVERSITY’S CENTER FOR THE ARTS
Wesleyan University’s Center for the Arts isan eleven-building complex on the Wesleyan campus that houses the departmentsof Art and Art History, Dance, Film Studies, Music, and Theater. Opened in1973, the CFA serves as a cultural center for the region, the state andNew England. The Center includes the 400-seat Theater, the 260-seat Hall, theWorld Music Hall (a non-Western performance space), the 414-seat CrowellConcert Hall and the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery.
The Center for the Arts gratefullyacknowledges the support of its many generous funders and collaborators,including the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, The Andrew W. MellonFoundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New England Foundationfor the Arts, as well as media sponsors the Hartford and New HavenAdvocates, Shore Publishing, WESU 88.1FM, and WNPR.
ABOUTWESLEYAN UNIVERSITY’S INSTITUE FOR CURATORIAL PRACTICE IN PERFORMANCE
The Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance was founded in 2010by Wesleyan graduates Samuel A. Miller and Pamela Tatge, Director of the Centerfor the Arts, in partnership with New York’s Danspace Project, in response tothe co-existence and cross-pollination of idea- and technique-based performancepractice. The Certificate Program considers performance in its broadest senseand the curriculum addresses time-based art practices of artists, curators andcultural leaders working in dance, performance art, experimental theaterand traditional/culturally specific programs and various combinations ofthese and other disciplines. The ICPP’s curriculum is designed to deepenthe professional student’s knowledge of diverse curatorial practices andimprove critical thinking and writing skills. ICPP students are required totake six courses in Artistic and Curatorial Practice, Social and CulturalContext, Entrepreneurial Strategies, and a Final Independent Project overseenby an advisor from the program or another field professional. Currentlythere is no post-graduate program in the United States that addressescuratorial practice in performance. The Institute for Curatorial Practice inPerformance fills this gap, as an interest in contemporary performancecontinues to thrive. The ICPP is committed to training arts professionals whowill build on the momentum of contemporary performance by using new informationand resources as creatively as possible, while also understanding howhistorical practices have shaped where we are today.
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