Twenty years ago, the curator and art historian
@roseleegoldberg began to think about what it might mean to “frame” a work of performance art. She had moved from London in 1975 to a loft on Mercer Street, just across from Joan Jonas’s studio and up the street from Donald Judd and Nam June Paik’s — all artists who blended art into their surroundings. So when Goldberg organized the first edition of her biennial dedicated to performance art, Performa (
@performanyc ), in 2005, she made the city itself the stage.
Goldberg, who is 79, has since scouted hundreds of sites with artists to choose what she calls “the perfect frame” for their work. Among the earliest was the Noho McDonald’s, where artist Christian Holstad installed a vintage jukebox that played Will Oldham, and the Slipper Room burlesque bar, where artist Francis Alÿs had a dancer tease her clothes back on. The venues grew more experimental as the years went on. In 2013, guests derobed at the Russian and Turkish baths to watch Rashid Johnson’s steamy rendition of Amiri Baraka’s play 'Dutchman,' which the artist revived again for the latest edition of Performa in November. Then, in 2015, the artist Robin Rhode chose Times Square on a Saturday night as the site for his interpretation of a slow-motion, atonal Arnold Schönberg opera. Instead of a moonlit forest, he used “the vertical architecture of New York itself” as the set, he has said. “Times Square, with its simultaneity of movement, light, and sound, resonated profoundly with Schoenberg’s fractured tonality and heightened emotional register.”
On the occasion of Performa’s 20th anniversary,
@rachelncorbett spoke to Goldberg about commissioning art in unconventional places, and how performance art’s history has been woven into the geography of New York for decades. Read their conversation at the link in our bio.
Photo: Paula Court/Courtesy of Performa
