Why Performance Has Become The Essentia... Dium of The 21st Century Artnet News

10/11/2018 Why Performance Has Become the Essential Art Medium of the 21st Century | artnet News
Art World (https://news.artnet.com/art-world)
Why Per fo rm a nce H as Beco me th e Es s e n tia l Art Me d iu m o f th e 2 1s t

Centu ry
In the aftermath of Anne Imhof's triumph with 'Faust,' we explore the explosive rise of the medium.
Caroline Elbaor (https://news.artnet.com/about/caroline-elbaor-464), June 5, 2017
Stina Nyberg, Shapes of States (2016). Photo ©José Figueroa, courtesy Block Universe.
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emerging within the contemporary art landscape. Following a slow but steady boil over the past year, Anne Imhof’s
immensely popular, Golden Lion-winning (https://news.artnet.com/art-world/venice-biennale-golden-lion-959171)Faust
O K AY
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/performance-blowing-medium-moment-973991 1/9
(https://news.artnet.com/art-world/venice-biennale-golden-lion-959171) at this year’s Venice Biennale arguably

crowned performance as the art world’s reigning medium right now.
Though Imhof’s success in Venice (https://news.artnet.com/art-world/venice-german-pavilion-anne-imhof-faust-

957185) certainly solidified the art form as au courant, its rise can be traced to a string of performance-based
exhibitions that made a splash across Europe in the past year, most notably Tino Sehgal at the Palais de Tokyo
(http://www.palaisdetokyo.com/en/event/tino-sehgal) in Paris; Donna Huanca at the Zabludowicz Collection
(https://www.zabludowiczcollection.com/exhibitions/view/donna-huanca) in London; “Ten Days Six Nights
(http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/bmw-tate-live-exhibition-ten-days-six-nights)“ at London’s
Tate Modern; and (again) Anne Imhof’s Angst cycle at the Kunsthalle Basel
(http://www.kunsthallebasel.ch/en/exhibition/angst/) and Berlin’s Hamburger Bahnhof
(http://www.smb.museum/en/museums-institutions/hamburger-bahnhof/exhibitions/detail/anne-imhof-angst-ii.html).
Meanwhile, London’s fairly young performance-only art festival, the annual Block Universe (http://blockuniverse.co.uk/)
—which has just closed its third edition—enjoyed its most popular iteration yet, with commissions by the likes of
performances artists Liz Magic Laser and Eglė Budvytytė.
Anne Imhof ’s Faust at the 2017 Venice Biennale. Photo ©Nadine Fraczkowski.
The rise in events like Block Universe arguably stems from the original, mother-of-all performance festivals: Performa
(http://performa-arts.org/). Founded in 2004 by Roselee Goldberg, Performa is a biennial event centered around
commissioned works that temporarily inhabit venues across New York City for a month-long celebration of the
medium. Under Goldberg’s direction, artists working in various mediums are encouraged to strengthen their
performance muscle—either by building upon an existing practice or experimenting with it for the first time.
Past participants include veritable luminaries, both in and outside of the field: Ragnar Kjartansson, Mika Rottenberg,
Simon Fujiwara, Alexandre Singh, Yvonne Rainer, Isaac Julien, and Francis Alÿs are among the long list of artists who
have contributed to Performa’s former editions.
In the past, time-based, intangible work requiring an actively-engaged audience was typically left in the shadow of the
more easily-accessed, traditional art object. So, what is it about performance that has suddenly become so alluring
now?
It is, perhaps, the much-discussed question of audience engagement that is making performance thrive. With our
cultural dependence upon screens moving us ever-further away from one another, the medium brings one back into the
moment—the here and now—by drawing attention to what is going on in one’s immediate surroundings, creating a
communal atmosphere that includes both the audience and the artist in a move that perhaps echoes Nicolas
Bourriaud’s theory of relational aesthetics.
“I think many artists are moving away from an emphasis on solitary studio practice and gallery display towards an
interest in measurement,
usage, traffic staging communal situations,
and for advertising in sharing
and content an experience
management. of art,”
See our Privacy PolicyCatherine Wood, senior curator of
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Performance at thecookies.
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Along with Tate’s film curator Andrea Lissoni, Wood spearheaded a series of performances, “Ten Days Six Nights,” this
past March and April at the Tate Modern. (The event, it is worth noting, was sold out.) The series was self-described as
intended to “mark a new departure in the concept of the art exhibition: from a static presentation to an experience of
art that unfolds through time.”
Fuji Nakaya, London Fog (2017). Ten Days Six Nights, Tate Moder n Tanks, March 2017. Courtesy Tate Moder n.
Artists on the roster included rising stars, such as Paul Maheke and Isabel Lewis, as well as seasoned veterans like
CAMP, a collective founded in 2004 that is known for its engagement with technology, or Phill Niblock, whose
experimental career spans 50 years.
Maitreyi Maheshwari, program director at the Zabludowicz Collection in London, aligned with Wood’s points when
speaking with artnet News: “Since so much of how art is seen is now through the circulation of images online or
through Instagram, I think there is a real sense of trying to re-examine the experience of an artwork,” she said. “Many
artists are also keen to reject the forms of market-led commodification of artworks, which is still very much focused on
material objects.”
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Donna Huanca, SCAR CYMBALS (2016). Performance View. Photo Tim Bowditch, courtesy the artist and
Zabludowicz Collection.
Maheshwari organized an exhibition of Donna Huanca’s work at the Zabludowicz Collection last year, and again, the
emphasis was on the interaction with the audience, with daily, six-hour-long performances. (Huanca’s performaces can
be viewed in the Unlimited section at Art Basel in Basel next week.)
“Donna and I had a number of conversations about how performances would feature in the work. From these it became
clear that the tension created between the visitor and the models was a really important aspect of the work,” she said.
Dmitry Komis, director of the David Lewis (http://www.artnet.com/galleries/david-lewis/) Gallery in New York, works
closely with multimedia artist Dawn Kasper, who is currently included in “Viva Arte Viva,” the Christine Macel-curated
International Exhibition at the 57th Venice Biennale.
Yet, when speaking about the origins of the artist’s relationship with the gallery to artnet News, Komis too highlighted
the importance of the communal—as opposed to monetary—aspect: “There was never an expectation of the work she
would make at the gallery and how ‘commercial’ it would be,” he said. “It was more about a community of artists, and
Dawn was part of that community.”
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Dawn Kasper at David Lewis’s 2017 Frieze New York booth. Courtesy the artist and David Lewis, New York. Photo: Zenzile Sky Lark
However, Komis also recognizes that Kasper’s work is indeed profitable. “The gallery has sold Kasper’s performative
installations and individual works to both public and private collections,” he said, citing Frieze New York, Art Basel
Miami, LISTE Art Basel, and Artissima all as examples of fairs in which Kasper’s work has been a success among
collectors.
“Her work does very well at art fairs. It stands out and people are immediately drawn to the work and the story,” Komis
explained, adding that institutions are also eager to scoop up Kasper’s work. “Her first show with the gallery ‘& sun &
or THE SHAPE OF TIME (http://davidlewisgallery.com/exhibition/dawn-kasper/)’ was sold to a European foundation as
one work. Her Venice installation is sold as one work, and we are currently in talks with a few institutions.”
“These works challenge the museum’s value system and its way of doing things in exciting ways, shifting the emphasis
from valuing material objects towards thinking about how a work can be encountered through time, or how a document
of a past action can simply fire the imagination,” Wood explained in regards to Tate’s acquisitions of performance
works.
more information about cookies.Wood,
Catherine By continuing
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curator of applications,
performance. youPhoto
agree to our use
Hugo of cookies. 2016, courtesy Tate.
Glendinning,
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“The [Zabludowicz] Collection is still relatively new to collecting performance art and so far this has tended to take the
form of documentation or objects left over or produced from performances,” Maheshwari said.
Another example of an artist who has successfully navigated the medium’s monetary element is the performance titan
Tino Sehgal, who famously refuses to permit the documentation of any of his performances (or “situations,” as his
pieces are known in art world lexicon).
Sehgal’s specifications subvert how the art market typically functions: He leaves no tangible trail, but still renders the
works purchasable by allowing for their endless repetition. In the end, Sehgal’s clever manipulation of the rules means
he can maintain artistic credibility while still making financial gains.
Helena Reckitt, author of the reader on performance pioneer Sanja Iveković, further elaborated on the medium’s
marketability: “Probably the best-known example of the re-performance trend is Marina Abramović’s Seven Easy
Pieces of 2005, for which she turned time-based performance works into tableaux vivants,” she said, referring to these
profitable reenactments.
Isabel Lewis, Occasion (2017) part of “Ten Days Six Nights” at Tate Moder n Tanks, March 2017. Image courtesy Tate.
But, beyond its proven profitability, the appeal of performance might lie in our current craving for connection, which is
what makes this medium so relevant and compelling.
“Performance is an acknowledgement that our ways of doing things and our hierarchies of value are up for
grabs,” Wood explained. “Performed gestures and actions are part of it, but it’s a state of liveness, of potential for
change, of positions and relations that artists are concerned with.”
“I also think Robert Rauschenberg (http://www.artnet.com/artists/robert-rauschenberg/)‘s statement—that he wanted

to make an art that ‘refuses to settle’—is key to our time,” Wood added.
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10/11/2018 Why Performance Has Become the Essential Art Medium of the 21st Century | artnet News

Art World (https://news.artnet.com/art-world)

Why Per fo rm a nce H as Beco me th e Es s e n tia l Art Me d iu m o f th e 2 1s t

Caroline Elbaor (https://news.artnet.com/about/caroline-elbaor-464), June 5, 2017

(https://news.artnet.com/art-world/venice-biennale-golden-lion-959171) at this year’s Venice Biennale arguably

Though Imhof’s success in Venice (https://news.artnet.com/art-world/venice-german-pavilion-anne-imhof-faust-

“I also think Robert Rauschenberg (http://www.artnet.com/artists/robert-rauschenberg/)‘s statement—that he wanted

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©2018 Artnet Worldwide Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

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