Many of our past programs are archived on our Vimeo page — watch now!
February 17 - March 17, 2012
Spanish-born New York based artist PS3* Pedro Sanchez3 presents a new video work in his full-scale model home designed for a life of deliberate deprivation.
January 5 - February 4, 2012
“I saw this dance about dance and dance making three times in one week. Each time I held onto it thinking, ‘This is as good as it gets.'” — David Velasco, BEST OF DANCE 2011, ARTFORUM
January 5 - February 4, 2012
Photographer Michael Hart has been capturing the art and lives of artists in photography for nearly a decade. UNREAL presents this photographic work in a survey of artists involved in and around the American Realness festival.
December 16, 2011
Jonathan Durham‘s performance MRE Tomorrow is a series of sculptural actions that involve excavating canned foods from cast concrete and helicopter parts. The contents will be heated with small stoves provided to soldiers in Russian MREs while in the field and in combat situations. Durham “adopts” the character of Little Orphan Annie a symbol of recession era optimism, to perform the grunt work. The culmination of these actions will be to prepare a package of canned goods to be mailed to St. Laurence Island, located west of mainland Alaska and just south of the Bering Strait.
December 7, 2011
From the Ruins: Artistic Process and Exhibition Spaces is a panel discussion to continue the dialogue begun in the email text “The Journey,” welcoming new participants and audience members to the conversation.
Building the Neverending Ruin of the World is a performance project in progress at Abrons as part of the exhibition Parts and Labor.
November 19, 2011
For Performa 11, artist Ragnar Kjartansson presents a 12-hour-long performance, entitledBliss, that will repeat the delirious final aria of Mozart’s 1786 opera The Marriage of Figaro. In the final act of this opera, the Count asks the Countess’ forgiveness for his arrogant blunders, which she grants, inspiring the entire court to celebrate. Kjartansson’s performance will replicate the lavishness of traditional opera with a full orchestra, elaborate scenery, and period costumes, and will feature renowned Icelandic tenor Kristján Jóhannsson and members of his master class, as well as the artist himself, continuously replaying the two-minute musical, visual, and narrative pinnacle of the opera, approaching a euphoric state for performers and listeners alike.
Supported by Luhring Augustine, and Performa Producers Circle members Jane Wesman & Don Savelson, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, and The Dedalus Foundation.
November 13, 2011
For their Performa Project, Laurel Nakadate and James Franco will create a three-part project based around Tennessee Williams’ famous play The Glass Menagerie (1944). In part one, Franco and Nakadate will lead a séance in the Elysée Hotel in New York City, in the room in which Tennessee Williams died. With an invited group of participants, the artists will communicate with Tennessee Williams through an Ouija board and receive instructions from the author’s spirit. The group will pass his message on to the audience members, who will participate in the piece by following the spirit’s instructions. In part two, female actresses of all types will audition in front of a live audience for the part of Laura in The Glass Menagerie. In the tradition of karaoke, Laura’s lines will run along the bottom of a video-projection of Franco playing the “Gentleman Caller” as the actresses act out the given scene. A second audition for male actors will make up the final part of the project; this will be a live audition for actors wishing to play the role of Tom in The Glass Menagerie, all delivering the same monologue from the play. As with the women auditioning for Laura, Nakadate and Franco will intervene as “directors” as the actors’ attempt to inhabit the role. Three Performances in Search of Tennessee will be broadcast on the Internet.
November 9 - November 10, 2011
For his Performa Commission, Simon Fujiwara will present an original theatrical performance, The Boy Who Cried Wolf, which explores themes including homosexuality, family dynamics, and the secret sexual powers of Abstract Expressionist painting.
November 4 - December 18, 2011
Culling from corporate and consumer culture, the domestic and the decorative, Darren Bader, Strauss Bourque-LaFrance, Charles Harlan, Lisa Oppenheim, and Donelle Woolford rearticulate high-brow aesthetic forms with low-brow American culture. Canvas scraps, chain-link fencing, Crayola color codes, cats, boxes, and other bric-a-brac are assimilated as both deadpan formal gesture and lukewarm polemic.
November 4 - December 23, 2011
Expanding upon his investigations of personal environments and family dynamics Colombian artist Juan Betancurth’s most recent work traces a dark parallel between domestic life and domestication. Betancurth has created an installation that triggers an uncomfortable relationship with everyday activity situated in the kitchen, articulating a process wherein we enclose ourselves into a built habitat.
