HOW ARE WE PERFORMING TODAY?

How Are We Performing Today? examined the shifting conditions and rising popularity of performance-related art, and its evolving—and frequently ambivalent—relationship to the museum. Drawing on the double meaning of “performance” as both a live element in the arts and a benchmark for economic productivity, the conference sought to understand the character and consequences of new performance formats and strategies used by artists, curators, and institutions. Moreover, it explored how performance is tied to the experience economy—in which memory itself is a product—and how it is framed institutionally. The program of prominent scholars, artists, and curators addressed questions including: Where and under what conditions does performance art emerge today? How can artists and institutions address performance’s migration from the margin to the center of contemporary art discourse? What kinds of transformations or conditions might be necessary to create a meaningful or critically engaged performance art program within the museum?

Through this conference, MoMA’s Department of Media and Performance Art sought to deepen its engagement with the theory and practice of performance-related art and with the public discourse about it—reflecting on the medium’s changing parameters, modes of production, and presentation.

Introduction
Sabine Breitwieser, Chief Curator, Department of Media and Performance Art, MoMA

Keynote Address
Judith Butler, Professor of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature and Co-director of the Program of Critical Theory, University of California, Berkeley
Shannon Jackson, Professor in the Arts and Humanities, University of California, Berkeley
Moderator: Sabine Breitwieser

Session 1: The Places of Performance
Rachel Haidu, Associate Professor in the Department of Art and Art History and the Graduate Program in Visual and Cultural Studies, University of Rochester
Andrea Fraser, Artist, Professor for New Genres, University of California, Los Angeles
Moderator: Johanna Burton, Director, graduate program at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College

Session 2: New Formats
Pierre Bal-Blanc, Director, CAC Brétigny, Paris, France
Boris Charmatz, Director, Rennes and Brittany National Choreographic Centre (Musée de la Danse)
Tim Griffin, Executive Director and Chief Curator, The Kitchen, New York
Stephanie Rosenthal, Chief Curator, Hayward Gallery, London
Moderator: Ana Janevski, Associate Curator of Performance, Department of Media and Performance Art, MoMA

Session 3: New Artistic Practices
Jutta Koether, artist, writer, and Professor, Hochschule für bildende Künste (HfbK), Hamburg
Jay Sanders, Curator of Performance, The Whitney Museum of the American Art, New York
Simon Leung, artist and Professor of Art, University of California, Irvine
Emily Roysdon, artist and writer
Moderator: Sabine Breitwieser

Archival Case Studies
Jonathan Lill, Project Archivist, MoMA
Michelle Elligott, Archivist, MoMA
David Senior, Bibliographer, MoMA

How Are We Performing Today? was made possible by MoMA’s Wallis Annenberg Fund for Innovation in Contemporary Art through the Annenberg Foundation.