The Foundry Theatre is bringing people to NYC from all over the world – people who are living and working within alternative practices of economics, safety, media/ communications, politics and more.

Join them for a kind of ‘there-are-other-ways-to-do-things’ show & tell featuring these remarkable local, national and international innovators.

Reservations/tickets available here.

Here’s the email I got from Melanie:

To my beloved friends and colleagues who make things,

I write to ask that you come to all or part of this weekend-long event we’re hosting at Cooper Union over the weekend of April 20-22 (Fri night and Sat & Sun afternoons). If nothing else, don’t miss Fri night/Grace Lee Boggs!

As most of you all know, we’re always experimenting with different sorts of events where artists might find meaningful exchange with people outside of our own community and practice – both as a way to assert our presence and significance in building the world AND hopefully to widen our access as a community to some of the amazing things going on outside our rehearsal rooms.

This time we’ve invited some insanely creative people to come to NYC from all over the world — South Africa, Argentina, Brazil, Spain, the USA etc — for a kind of Tedtalks/there-are-other-ways-of-making-the-world show & tell about the ways they are creating/living/working in innovative, alternative systems that change the way the world works. While these practices are proliferating widely across the globe, there’s barely a language for what they are or how they’re connected. They’re primarily framed as a kind of ‘visionary activism’, distinct from or even instead of protest politics (academics refer to them as “prefigurative’ practices.) I think ‘activism’ is only one of its frames; on a deeper level it’s simply people who are creating and experimenting with new forms of transformation, which is why I’m inviting you to be part of this conversation. This is another community of makers with whom we might share some interesting perspectives.

There’s an interesting language to be developed between those of us who create art and those who are creating these innovative structures. We both live in the ambiguity of creation, of not knowing but proceeding anyway. I wonder if we might be a kind of first circle’ to engage the depth and complexity of these processes. In fact I think many of the guests who are coming decided to do so because a theatre company invited them, because they want to speak about their work with other people who are creatively engaged with making things. So we’ve structured the breakout sessions on Sat and Sun to include artists as respondents and we’ve left lots of space for our ensuing conversations.

Finally, because we, as community of artists, are ultimately driven and inspired by each other, and because we’re so rarely together as a community, it would be a pleasure to share this experience with you all. I hope to see you there – thousands of you. Please pass this invite along to everyone I’ve never met. All info is below

Yours in love and inquiry,

xMelanie

Popularity: 2% [?]

Graz, Austria’s steirischer herbst festival is presenting a (possibly) interesting experimental forum this summer called “Truth is Concrete.” As the project’s website puts it:

The world is changing so fast that we can’t keep track: the rise of the populist right, financial devastations, fundamental destruction of educational and cultural structures, democratic uprisings, Islamic fundamentalism, threats of technological and ecological catastrophes – where to start, where to end? But what is the role of art in this race of events that we can barely follow, let alone properly understand?

I have to admit that I find the idea of “concrete truths” to somewhat questionable (about as questionable as the choice to make most protest art), but insofar as the experiment is dedicated to moving beyond critique and political activism, toward actually beginning to affect solutions, it could very well be an illuminating experience. “[A]desire for simple solutions is growing,” the site continues:

And we – perhaps indeed leftist hobbyists – seem to have lost touch with a larger base.So we take the possibility of concrete truth as a working hypothesis and look for direct action, for concrete change and knowledge. For an art that engages in specific political and social situations – and for an activism that searches for intelligent, creative means of self-empowerment.

So make it of that what you will; for those interested, the forum is offering a pretty stunning deal: 100 travel and accommodation grants for those who want to take part. Deadline is May 15, and if you wind up going, please let us know.

Popularity: 2% [?]

As part of Exit Art’s Collective / Performative group exhibit, Culturebot will present a group project called Ephemeral Evidence.

Ephemeral Evidence consists of a series of collaborative explorations between writers and performing artists to investigate the relationship between practice and skill in performance-making, object-making and context. We propose an experiment in which objects are created directly from the result of the performing artist’s practice – their skilled application of learned techniques. Does the object, existing as residue of the ephemeral event, gain meaning as document or value object in itself? Both? How does the critical dialogue around the performance process and object inform our perception and valuation of the art?

The writer/artist pairs are Aretha Aoki with Maura Donohue, Rebecca Davis with Aaron Mattocks, Arturo Vidich with Jeremy M. Barker and Sarah Rosner & the AO Movement Collective with Alyssa Alpine.

The installations will be durational throughout the day with culminating performances at 5PM.

Saturday, April 21st, the closing day of the exhibit, will feature an all-day display of the created objects, a special performance by Dan Safer and Mike Mikos of Witness Relocation and conclude with COME OVER TO OUR PLACE (5PM) hosted by Andy Horwitz and Chloë Bass which re-creates the post-show hang-out as performance event, bringing together the artists and writers of EPHEMERAL EVIDENCE with other artists, writers, critics and passers-by to discuss the ideas around the exhibit and what it means to be making it at Exit Art, now. Guests are invited to participate, watch, or both. Food and booze will be served.

Ephemeral Evidence will occur on the following schedule:

Tuesday April 17

THE SOLO PROJECT
Aretha Aoki with Maura Donohue

THE SOLO PROJECT is a personal story that attempts to reach beyond the personality of the solo dancer, and will continue Aretha’s interest in the formation of narrative through choreographic structure. Can the dance act as language? Can a visual or literary text be movement?

By bringing together movement, text, sound and video, Aoki’s work allows for the formation of spaces where the unexpected can emerge. She is interested in layering and juxtaposing visual, written and embodied forms to both generate and disturb a sense of character, place and narrative, and often engage in collaboration with artists—dancers, writers and composers–to allow these tensions to surface. Along with this collaborative process, her practice explores disciplinary limits and the ways that dance can interact with other forms without prioritizing one over another, and rather, informing and extending the possibilities each.

Wednesday April 18

NEWS
Rebecca Davis with Aaron Mattocks

NEWS (working title) is a durational performance that yields a large-scale drawing. Wearing shoes constructed from newspaper, performers walk continuously in a circle on a large sheet of white paper throughout the day until the gallery closes. Over time, the newspaper ink rubs into the white paper, leaving a visual presence of the path walked by the performers.

The work creates a simultaneous physical construction and deconstruction (walking destroys the shoes but creates the drawing) and also a symbolic one—as the drawing underfoot becomes increasingly dark, the headlines from which it was created fade in our collective memories.

Thursday April 19

NOBODY IS PERFECT BUT YOU COME CLOSE
Arturo Vidich with Jeremy M. Barker

The best listener is one who never talks back. As a statement both for and against the uncollectible nature of performance, Vidich will address the septic time bomb of a roadkill victim as a live art object, and fellow performer. The roadkill will absorb the emotions and thoughts of the performer, like a morbid piggy bank, as well as stand in for other objects and people. The event will be thoroughly captured on video, with emphasis on collapsing the hierarchy of live performance, documentation of performance, and performance made for video. During the day, the public will be able to contribute to the performance by teaching something to the performer, or through conversation. Sonic, tactile, and video elements will be prepared on-site, as well as creating the performance score, which will be enacted at 5pm.

Friday April 20

barrish: the scores
Sarah Rosner & the AO Movement Collective with Alyssa Alpine

This installation manifests itself as an open rehearsal, followed by a series of workshops in which participants are invited into the AOMC’s current work in process, barrish, to embody and digest select movement-based improvisational scores central to the work’s logic and aesthetic.

Participants are invited to wrestle with unleashing hysteria and becoming “skinless”, navigating the intimacy of being sewn to another performer for “the string score”, queering notions of masculine certainty and female acquiescence by “glaciering”, or to simply bear witness to the practice and discussion surrounding these scores as they are translated by new bodies.

This exploring/embodying/digestion process both artifacts the score (via the collected/created images, words, and visual intake of the work) and displaces the work’s ephemerality outside of its former boundaries into/onto the performative bodies of those participating. Does teaching a score make performative work less ephemeral? What about verbalizing the concrete ideas, logic, and rules behind the more abstract movements? What parts stick and what parts evaporate? Are these potentially viable strategies for making ephemeral art last?

Taught/Rehearsed by performers Lillie De, Leah Ives, and Emily Skillings, and choreographer/artistic director Sarah A.O. Rosner, with additional credit to performer Anna Adams Stark (not present).

Saturday April 21

Giant Yves Klein All Out Attack (3PM)
Witness Relocation

In an homage to Yves Klein’s Anthropométries, action painting, and the monster battle films of Godzilla, Dan Safer and Mike Mikos of Witness Relocation will drink around 6 shots of whiskey, cover themselves in paint, and wrestle on a giant canvas. The canvas will then be displayed on a wall as evidence of the physical action that transpired on it, next to a video of the event, the bottle of whiskey, and the paint splattered wrestling costumes.

Performed by Dan Safer and Mike Mikos. Video by Kaz Phillips Safer.

COME OVER TO OUR PLACE (5PM)
hosted by Andy Horwitz and Chloë Bass

COME OVER TO OUR PLACE re-creates the post-show hang-out as performance event, bringing together the artists and writers of EPHEMERAL EVIDENCE with other artists, writers, critics and passers-by for food and conversation. Inspired by Lois Weaver’s THE LONG TABLE, a formalized performance-discussion as an “experiment in participation and public engagement,” this event contextualizes a meal (Chloë Bass’ performance PROCESS DINNER) as a public forum, encouraging informal conversations on serious topics. PROCESS DINNER invites guests to enjoy a dish as its recipe’s component parts: a reminder of the constant making that goes into every art world moment, even the farewell. Guests are invited to participate, watch, or both: as a shared social experience, all guests become observed performers.

Popularity: 4% [?]

I T I N E R A N T
Performance Art Festival

March 30th, 2012, 8 – 11 PM

@

GRACE EXHIBITION SPACE

840 Broadway, 2nd Floor
Brooklyn, NY 11206

QMAD, Queens Media Arts Development, launches ITINERANT, a citywide festival for Contemporary Performance Art to be hosted at various venues in the five boroughs of New York City. ITINERANT starts its five week program at GRACE EXHIBITION SPACE in Brooklyn on Friday, March 30th, featuring the work of local, national and international performance artists.

ITINERANT 2012 focuses on live performative works that treat notions of intimacy, self-reflection, and introspection. Artists working in Contemporary Performance Art were selected to participate from an open call that attracted more than 175 local, national and international submissions. Forty five artists will be featuring new and existing works that explore the program’s theme over a period of 5 weeks starting on March 30th through May 5th.

Participating artists at GRACE EXHIBITION SPACE are: Jessica Bonenfant, Camila Cañeque, Amy Finkbeiner, Carlos Gonzalez, Whitney V. Hunter, Rosalind Murray, Alex Nathanson and Dylan Neely, Negin Moss, Alaina Stamatis, Chris Udemezue, and Genevieve White.

ITINERANT 2012 will be presented in New York City on the following dates and in collaboration with the following venues: Friday, March 30th, 8 – 11 PM at Grace Exhibition Space, 840 Broadway, 2nd Floor, Brooklyn; Saturday, April 21st, 6 – 9 PM at Crossing Art Gallery, 136-17 39th Avenue, Flushing, Queens; Saturday, April 28th, 7 – 10 PM at Floor 4 Art, 2136 Frederick Douglass Blvd, 2nd Floor, Manhattan; Sunday, April 29th, 6 – 9 PM at Bronx Art Space, 305 East 140th Street, Bronx; and Saturday, May 5th, 6 – 8 PM at Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art – Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Garden, 1000 Richmond Terrace, Staten Island.

In addition, ITINERANT will present Public Performances at the new 37th Road Pedestrian Plaza (between 74th and 73rd Streets) in Jackson Heights, Queens. The program includes the presentation of “Worlds Together, Worlds Apart,” a durational performance collaboration between Camila Cañeque and Hector Canonge, every Friday, April 6th – May 4th, 3 – 6 PM, and the public performances by Chloe Bass, John Cichon, Lizzie Scott, and Priscila Stadler on Saturday, May 12th, 3 – 6 PM.

QMAD, Queens Media Arts Development, is under the direction of artist, Hector Canonge, who launched ITINERANT in Queens in 2011. Canonge explains that ITINERANT is “the first program for performance art in this borough,” and that he “wants to introduce audiences to this art form as well as to create dialogue and exchange among artists coming from all over to the festival. ITINERANT started as a mini-festival with handful of local artists presenting their live performances at Crossing Art Gallery, I wanted to create the same in larger scale in NYC.” Canonge adds that the experience has been an incredible challenge. “To be able to collaborate with organizations and galleries in the five boroughs, to have their support and trust that I could carry such enterprise has been a major incentive in organizing the event.” QMAD, under the leadership of Canonge, presents the monthly LGBT film series CINEMAROSA, the annual program Framing AIDS, and the monthly art series A-Lab Forum.

Directions:

GRACE EXHIBITION SPACE (840 Broadway – 2nd Floor) is located on Flushing Avenue Stop on J-Z Trains. Walk 3 blocks east on Broadway, btwn. Ellery St. & Park Ave.

More information: www.qmad.org/itinerant or email: [email protected]

Popularity: 3% [?]

Hi, I’m Sherri Kronfeld, and this week I’m reporting from the Motherlodge Live Arts Exchange, an cross-disciplinary performance festival which occurs annually in Louisville and New York City.

Founded in 2009 by Ray Rizzo, a genial and multi-talented musician and actor with roots in the Louisville music scene who has performed in plays by Adam Rapp and as a drummer with too many bands to list here, the festival was initially created as a contemporary performance offshoot to the annual Humana Festival of New American Plays.

In just a few short years, Motherlodge has become quite a wild and wooly beast, an inclusive event which has embraced Taylor Mac and Lady Rizo, the live-drawn performance of Ethan Lipton and Michael Arthur, mashups of short plays and rock music by major artists, first looks at new theater and music pieces in development, a curated pop-up art gallery, improv comedy, and even cooking events with an intellectual slant. In the Louisville branch of the festival, shows range from free to $10, and participants include a healthy mix of Louisville locals, art-makers, as well as a smattering of participants from the Humana Festival.

In a conversation about his goals for the festival, Rizzo noted that Motherlodge can be nimble and flexible with its programming, since, as he put it “we are not trying to sustain one particular audience” with a long run of one kind of work. Each show will typically have one to three performances across the weeklong festival, and the shows play to packed houses at non-traditional venues, who come from a variety of backgrounds and attend with the awareness that any night they are likely to catch something completely unique and unannounced- especially as another of Rizzo’s stated goals is to feature artists performing in ways audiences do not normally know them for. Will Oscar-winner Michael Shannon play with a Steely Dan cover band for one-night only? A rumor is spreading..

This year’s festival has grown, moving from one venue- the venerable Rudyard Kipling- to three, live streaming the majority of its events, and expanding its already-catholic embrace to include: an “improvised film scoring explosion and hootenanny”, several Long Table discussions in the style created by Lois Weaver- including one focused around the work of cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker, a “Live Lunch” radio performance for a live audience presented in partnership with local radio station WFPK, and, in a tip of the hat to this college-basketball crazed town, a screening of the NCAA final presented as a performance/happening that will take place during the breaks of game play, with comedians and musicians scoring the course of the game.

Kaitlin Kelly, Stage Manager meets with Ray Rizzo and festival coordinator Aaron Latos, to go over the schedule of events

This is contemporary performance for the masses, surely. Locals are encouraged to step right in and get involved, including as actors in the most ambitious piece of Motherlodge’s pie this year. “Crawling Between Heaven and Earth” is a roots music-infused re-imagining of Shakespeare’s Hamlet as it might have played out in a rural American river town in the 1920′s. Shakespearian actor, educator, (and former Power Ranger) Jason Narvy, and New York playwright Eric John Meyer, will workshop their show this week, with a cast drawn from several New York actors along with Louisvillians who auditioned just today.

At the Rudyard Kipling on Sunday, the first in-person meeting for Audrey Crabtree, Jason Narvy and Eric Meyer, the artistic team behind "Crawling Between Heaven and Earth".

The music for the show, including new arrangements of 20’s tunes, will be performed by The Slow Charleston and Bonnie Prince Billy. How did the ‘prince’ of indie rock come to take part in the festival? Rizzo bumped into him just a few weeks ago at a music festival, where both were playing, and asked him, of course – just the kind of happy accident/surprising collaboration that makes this festival a joyful playground for artists and audiences. Stay tuned for further dispatches from Louisville later this week!

Popularity: 3% [?]

Nrityagram Dance Ensemble, and Chitrasena, perform ALAP, Surupa Sen, Bijayini Satpathy, Pavithra Reddy, photo: Nan Melville.

When I traveled to India last April, Mark Morris told me I would be remiss if I didn’t visit the extraordinary women of Nrityagram at their remote and incredible compound devoted to the Odissi tradition of classical Indian dance.  It is almost too magical to put into words – but suffice to say watching a simple studio rehearsal as they prepared for a tour to Israel will remain one of the most mesmerizing and transforming live performance experiences, ever.  Artistic Director Surupa Sen is a firecracker – a tremendous wit, and a daring choreographer seeking to expand the reach of Odissi and its contemporary relevance.  She and her dancers are each captivating and virtuosic in their own indelible ways.  For their week at the Joyce Theater, Nrityagram Dance Ensemble presents a collaboration with Sri Lanka’s Chitrasena Dance Company, specialists of Kandyan dance; Sen will give us a celebration of both forms, to be sure, examining the dual presence of feminine and masculine, ritual and sensuality, and the fascinating legends of the divine.

http://joyce.org/performancestickets/calendar_detail.php?event=426&theater=1

Performance Schedule
March 20-25
Tue-Wed 7:30pm; Thu-Sat 8pm; Sun 2pm

John Cage and Merce Cunningham, photo credit: Hans Wild

Baryshnikov Arts Center
Cage/Cunningham Program
4 Walls / Doubletoss Interludes

If you missed the Merce Cunningham Dance Company’s final bow at the Park Avenue Armory on New Year’s Eve, or if, like me, you just miss the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, this might just be your saving grace.  Pianist Alexei Lubimov will perform John Cage’s 4 Walls, incidentally a piece composed only for the white keys of the piano, and former Cunningham company members will present a new staging of Cunningham’s Doubletoss (1993), under the able direction of Robert Swinston, a member of the Cunningham Trust, and the former Director of Choreography for the ensemble.  Don’t end up like Joni Mitchell, lamenting that you don’t know what you’ve got til its gone – performances of this kind will unfortunately be fewer and further between.

http://www.bacnyc.org/events/performances/4_walls

Performance Schedule,
March 22-24
Thu-Fri 8pm; Sat 2pm & 8pm

Popularity: 2% [?]

The Invisible Dog Art Center, under the direction of Lucien Zayan, opens three solo exhibitions, one group show, and all 32 of its resident artists’ studios this weekend, March 10-11.

To begin its spring season, with a focus on diverging embodiments of time, the Carroll Gardens interdisciplinary hub presents: Distorting (a messiah project, 13C) by R. Justin Stewart, curated by Risa Shoup, in the ground floor space; 365 by Daniel Horowitz, curated by Chong Gon Byun, in the garden gallery; The Artists of The Invisible Dog by photographer Malcolm Brown as individual prints and in book form; Work/Space 2012, the second installment of the annual 32 in-house artists’ group exhibition and open studios event. Additionally, Mac Premo’s autobiographic curiosity cabinet, the Dumpster Project, remains on view in the outdoor space.

With Distorting (a messiah project, 13C), Stewart, a professed agnostic, presents the first installment in a series of sculptural explorations of the idea of the messianic within Judaism, here focusing on the 13^th century.  A web of fleece, rope, and plastic radiates through the space, abstracting the artist’s two-year research process while simultaneously disclosing it through QR codes embedded on the installation.

Daniel Horowitz, an artist working primarily in digital media, shares 365 new works fabricated during a Parks-ian commitment to daily analog illustration, collage, and “making something with your hands.”  This curious bestiary marks Horowitz’s most comprehensive solo show to date.

Photographer Malcolm Brown introduces the resident artists of the Invisible Dog in a series of quirky and humorous portraits.  Taken over an intensive yearlong process, the images highlight the interplay between the artists’ personalities, work environment, and creative practice.  The works will be available for purchase as framed or individual prints and as a 68-page book.

The group show and open studios event features: Douglas Adesko, Juan Alfaro, Dean Alfonzo, Bina Altera, Rachel Barrett, Vanessa Belli, Gabriel Benzur, Malcolm Brown, Liz Burow, Chong Gon Byun, Julia Cocuzza, Andre Da Loba, Dillon Dewaters, Maria Gracia Donoso, Pascale Gueracague, Nancy Hubbard, Whitney V. Hunter, Nemo Hoffman, Oliver Jeffers, Kiya Kim, Anna Levikova, Gilles Lyon, Anne Mourier, Joanna Neborsky, Prune Nourry, Sarah Palmer, Claudia Paneca, Mac Premo, Xavier Roux, Aaron Ruff, Anita Sto, and Susan Weinthaler

Outside, one may still experience Mac Premo’s dumpster as moveable-gallery and vast collection of stuff as art object/personal taxonomy.

Group show hours and open studios are Saturday March 10^th from 1-10pm and Sunday March 11^th from 11am-6pm.  Opening reception: Saturday, March 10th 6-10pm.

The Invisible Dog Art Center

51 Bergen St. Brooklyn, NY

F/G to Bergen St.

This event is part of The Armory Arts Week.

Photo credit R. Justin Stewart.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Originally presented at The Chocolate Factory, I’m Nobody! Who Are You? is re-conceived for the New York Live Arts Ford Foundation Live Gallery Wall. The installation is comprised of a series of life-sized video portraits, presented in pairs, of individuals who are connected directly or tangentially to New York Live Arts. The work breaks boundaries by allowing the viewer to observe other people for longer lengths of time than would exist in standard social conditions. By observing paired portraits, viewers create relationships, and consequently narratives, between the participants despite the known conditions of the filming. I’m Nobody! Who Are You? challenges the viewer to consider how they construct their appearance for others and respond to the same construction of others. Ultimately, I’m Nobody! Who Are You? asks viewers to consider the artificiality of their assumptions about communities, individuals, institutions, and the arts.

with

 

• luciana achugar
• Vanessa Anspaugh
• Anna Azrieli
• Sidra Bell
• Michelle Boulé
• Brian Brooks
• Chloë Z. Brown
• Gabri Christa
• Jean Davidson
• Maura Nguyen Donohue
• Cathy Edwards
• Paul Engler
• Keely Garfield
• Ain Gordon
• Miguel Gutierrez
• Hristoula Harakas
• Anja Hitzenberger
• K.J. Holmes
• Bill T. Jones
• Joanna Kotze

 

• Sheila Elizabeth Lewandowski
• I-Ling, Liu
• Brian McCormick
• Jodi Melnick
• Carla Peterson
• Craig Peterson
• Brian Rogers
• Daniel Bernard Roumain
• Philip Sandström
• Valda Setterfield
• Sally Silvers
• Vicky Shick
• Megan V. Sprenger
• Laura Staton
• Elaine Summers
• Donna Uchizono
• Arturo Vidich
• Marya Wethers
• Enrico D. Wey
• Christopher Williams

http://www.newyorklivearts.org/event/imnobody

Popularity: 3% [?]

PAJ has published its 100th issue! PAJ 100 features several generations of artists, curators, critics, and presenters responding to the main themes of the issue: Belief, Being Contemporary, Performance and Science, and Writing and Performance. The issue also includes conversations with artists on working downtown, curating performance, and theater/art crossovers. Six artists contribute portfolios of their drawings.

To celebrate PAJ 100 there will be two public events. On two evenings several contributors to PAJ 100 will present their response on important themes in the issue at the SoHo gallery, Location One (26 Greene St., NYC). All programs are Free and Open to the Public.

Tuesday, January 24, at 7:00 pm
Belief – In a world where so many values have been questioned and contested in this era of great transformation on a global scale, what do you still believe in?

featuring:

-Barbara Hammer,
filmmaker
-Gregory Whitehead,
writer & radio producer
-Alison Knowles,
Fluxus artist & performer
-George Quasha,
poet & visual artist
-Lenora Champagne,
performer & writer

Wednesday, January 25, at 7:00 pm
Being Contemporary –
What makes a play, a performance, a piece of music, or an essay contemporary? What does the search for the contemporary mean to the arts and to the public today?

Featuring:

-Joan Jonas,
visual artist & performer
-Linda Weintraub,
curator & writer
-Martha Wilson,
visual artist & curator
-Kenneth Collins,
theater director
-Claire Bishop,
curator & writer

Popularity: 3% [?]

Culturebot is thrilled and honored that Meiyin and Mark at Under The Radar have graciously invited us to collaborate on and organize two discussions on contemporary performance during the festival. We will be engaging with some of the ideas that have garnered the most attention and discussion on CBOT lately: our article on Visual Art Performance vs. Contemporary Performance and the issue of Citizen Criticism and the Arts.

Full details below (updates to come as panelists are finalized and bios come in). Hope you will join us!

Can’t be there? Conversations will be livestreamed at http://www.livestream.com/newplay

Under The Radar presents
CULTUREBOT CONVERSATIONS ON CONTEMPORARY PERFORMANCE

Performance and Context: The Black Box and The White Cube
Sunday, January 8 at 1PM
LuEsther Lounge
@ The Public Theater
425 Lafayette Street

In today’s cultural landscape, contemporary artists are continuously blurring the lines between theater, dance, installation, performance art, visual art and live art. The work’s context comes from who curates it, where it happens, who writes about it and who is its intended audience. Performance is perceived and evaluated differently when presented in a gallery or museum as opposed to a theater. Why is that? What does it mean? And how can we move beyond the Black Box vs. the White Cube and devise new frameworks for genre-defying performance?

Participants:
Philip Bither (Senior Curator of Performing Arts, Walker Art Center)
RoseLee Goldberg (Founding Director and Curator, Performa)
Liz Magic Laser (Artist)
David Levine (Artist)

RECOMMENDED READING:
Claire Bishop, “Unhappy Days In The Art World” (Brooklyn Rail)
Andrew Horwitz, “Visual Art Performance vs. Contemporary Performance” (Culturebot)

Everyone’s A Critic! Exploring the Changing Landscape of Arts Writing
Sunday, January 15 at 1PM
LuEsther Lounge
@ The Public Theater
425 Lafayette Street

As the mainstream media continues to cut its arts coverage, an increasingly diverse field of citizen journalists has filled in the gap. Some decry this as a disaster, proclaiming the death of criticism. Others characterize this as a long-overdue democratization of critical conversation. The truth is probably somewhere in between. What is the role of the arts writer in today’s society – either “professional” or “amateur”, what is the difference between a reviewer, a critic and a crank, and what does the future hold?

Participants:
Randy Gener (U.S. editor of CriticalStages.org)
George Hunka (Superfluities Redux)
Margo Jefferson (critic, author, professor)
Tom Sellar (Theater magazine (Yale) & Village Voice)

RECOMMENDED READING:
Michael Kaiser, “The Death of Criticism” (Huffington Post)
George Hunka, “Criticism dies, again” (Superfluities Redux)
Jeremy Barker, “Why Aren’t Audiences Stupid?” (Culturebot)
Andrew Horwitz, “Why Aren’t Audiences Stupid?(Andy Version)” (Culturebot)

PARTICIPANT BIOS:

Philip Bither has been Walker Art Center’s Senior Curator of Performing Arts since April 1997, overseeing one of the country’s leading contemporary performing arts programs. He has overseen significant expansion of the Performing Arts program, including the building of the McGuire Theater, an acclaimed new theatrical space within the Walker expansion (2005), the raising of the program’s first commissioning/programming endowment, the commissioning of more than 100 new works in dance, music and performance, and the annual presentation/residency support of dozens of contemporary performing arts creators, established and emerging. Prior to this, he served as Director of Programming/Artistic Director for the Flynn Center, later becoming Associate Director/Music Curator at Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). He received the Fan Taylor Distinguished Service Award in 2009. He sits on numerous federal, state, local, and national foundation arts panels and he speaks and writes about the contemporary performing arts nationally.

Randy Gener is the Nathan Award-winning editor, writer, critic and artist in New York City.  He began as a theater critic and staff contributor at The Village Voice from 1991 to 2001, as well as an entertainment writer for The Daily News and The Star Ledger.  A dramaturg at Pan Asian Repertory Theatre, Gener is the U.S. editor of Critical Stages(criticalstages.org), an international journal; the Broadway editor of the New York Theatre Wire (nytheatre-wire.org), which he co-founded in 1996; and a contributing writer of American Theatre magazine. As a curator, producer and consultant of international festivals, Gener creatively collaborates with U.S. and European arts organizations, foreign institutes, consulate offices and NGOs to build, design and create artistic programs, strategic alliances, international tours in Europe, conferences and seminars, foreign-media partnerships and editorial content. Gener most recently served for four years as the curatorial adviser and co-creator of “From the Edge,” USITT’s USA National Exposition at the 2011 Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space. A 2003 New York Times critic fellow, Gener contributes critical essays and scholarly articles to books and anthologies, most recently in ”Cambridge Guide to the American Theater” (Cambridge University Press), ”The World of Theater” (International Theatre Institutes in Paris and Bangladesh), and “About the Phenomenon of Theater” (Namayesh in Tehran, Iran).  For his editorial work and critical essays for American Theatre, Gener has received, among other awards, grants and honors, the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism, the Deadline Club Award for Best Arts Reporting from the New York chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists; and the NLGJA Journalist of the Year. Last year, Gener was among five artists from around the world conferred by His Excellency President Benigno S. Aquino III with the Presidential Award as “Pamana ng Pilipino (Legacy of the Filipino Nation).” Gener’s website is theaterofOneWorld.org.

RoseLee Goldberg, Founding Director and Curator of Performa, is an art historian, critic, and curator whose book Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present, first published in 1979, pioneered the study of performance art. Former Director of the Royal College of Art Gallery in London and Curator at The Kitchen in New York, she is also the author of Performance: Live Art Since 1960 (1998) and Laurie Anderson (2000), and is a frequent contributor to Artforum and other publications. Recent awards and grants include two awards from the International Association of Art Critics (2011), the Agnes Gund Curatorial Award from Independent Curators International (2010), Curatorial Research Fellowship from the Warhol Foundation (2008), and Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters from the French Government (2006). In 2004, she founded Performa, a non-profit arts organization committed to the research, development, and presentation of performance by visual artists from around the world, and launched New York’s first performance biennial, Performa 05 (2005), followed by Performa 07 (2007), and Performa 09 (2009). In 2011, Performa presented its fourth biennial, Performa 11 (November 1–21, 2011). Since 1987, Goldberg has taught at New York University.

George Hunka launched the first version of his blog Superfluities Redux, under the title Superfluities, on 1 October 2003. An Albee Foundation fellow, he has written several plays and essays, as well as reviews, theory and feature stories about theatre for the New York Times, the Guardian (UK), Yale University’s Theater, Contemporary Theatre Review, PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art and other publications. His first book, Word Made Flesh: Philosophy, Eros and Contemporary Tragic Drama, was published by EyeCorner Press in March 2011.

Margo Jefferson is a cultural critic and the author of On Michael Jackson (Vintage). She was a staff writer for The New York Times for 12 years, and received a Pulitzer Prize in 1995. Her reviews and essays have appeared in Bookforum, The Washington Post, New York Magazine, Grand Street, The Nation, and MS. She has been anthologized in The Inevitable: Contemporary Writers Confront Death (Norton); Best African American Essays, 2010, (Ballantine/One World); Black Cool: One Thousand Streams of Blackness (Counterpoint) and The Mrs. Dalloway Reader (Harcourt) and The Jazz Cadence of American Culture (Columbia). She also wrote and performed a solo theater piece, Sixty Minutes in Negroland at The Cherry Lane and The Culture Project. Currently, she teaches writing at Columbia University and Eugene Lang College.

New York-based artist Liz Magic Laser (b. 1981, New York City) is a graduate of the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program and Columbia University’s MFA program. Laser has been a resident at the LMCC Workspace Program, the Smack Mellon Artist Studio Program and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Her work has been exhibited internationally including The Pace Gallery, New York (2011); Casey Kaplan, New York (2011); Derek Eller Gallery, New York (2010); MoMA PS 1, New York (2010); the Prague Biennale 4, Czech Republic (2009); Galeria Horach Moya, Mallorca, Spain (2011) and the Ljubljana Biennale, Slovenia (2011). Her recent public performance project, Flight (2011), took place in Times Square with support from Franklin Furnace and the Times Square Alliance. In November 2011, Laser presented the Performa Commission, I Feel Your Pain at the School of Visual Art Silas Theatre, a former cinema in New York City. Recent articles discussing her work have appeared in publications including, Modern Painters, Frieze, ArtReview, Artforum.com, Art In America and The New York Times.

David Levine‘s work encompasses performance, theater, photography, installation, and video. Dividing his time between NYC and Berlin, where he is Director of the Studio Program at the European College of Liberal Arts, Levine has presented performance projects and other work at such international art spaces and surveys as MoMA, Documenta XII, Mass MoCA, Town House Gallery/Cairo, HAU2/Berlin, PS122/NYC, the Luminato Festival and the Watermill Center, and has directed at Atlantic Theater Company, the Vineyard Theater/NYC, and Primary Stages/NYC. David’s work has been featured in Mousse, The New York Times, Artforum, Theater, Art in America, Bomb, Cabinet, Theater Heute, Art Review, Die Zeit, TDR, The Village Voice, Time Out, and the Believer, and his own writing has appeared in Cabinet, Theater, and Triple Canopy. He has received grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, the Kulturstiftung Des Bundes, and Etants Donnés/French Fund for Performance. He is currently working with composer Joe Diebes, poet Christian Hawkey, and the Watermill Center/NYTW on an opera about Milli Vanilli. David will be presenting Anger at the Movies, a performance seminar, as part of PS122′s COIL Festival starting on Jan 10.

Tom Sellar is Editor of Theater magazine, a journal of criticism, plays and reportage published by Yale School of Drama (www.theatermagazine.org). His criticism and reporting appear regularly in national publications including the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune and American Theatre, and he has been a frequent contributor to the Village Voice since 2000. Sellar received his doctorate in 2003 from Yale University, where he is currently Associate Professor of Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism.

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