: Performance Program
How can artists and institutions address performance’s migration from the margin to the center of contemporary art discourse? How Are We Performing Today? Through this conference, MoMA’s Department of Media and Performance Art seeks 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. How are we performing today? is made possible by MoMA’s Wallis Annenberg Fund for Innovation in Contemporary Art through the Annenberg Foundation. NOVEMBER 16
INTRODUCTION by Sabine Breitwieser, Chief Curator, Department of Media and Performance Art, MoMA
KEYNOTE ADDRESSJudith 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
Discussion moderated by 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 RochesterAndrea Fraser, artist and Professor for New Genres, University of California, Los Angeles
Discussion moderated by Johanna Burton, Director, graduate program at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College
NOVEMBER 17
INTRODUCTION by Sabine Breitwieser, Chief Curator, Department of Media and Performance Art, MoMA
SESSION 2: NEW FORMATS Pierre Bal-Blanc, Director, CAC Brétigny, Paris, FranceBoris Charmatz, Director, Rennes and Brittany National Choreographic Centre (Musée de la Danse)Tim Griffin, Executive Director and Chief Curator, The Kitchen, New YorkStephanie Rosenthal, Chief Curator, Hayward Gallery, London
Discussion moderated by Ana Janevski, Associate Curator of Performance, Department of Media and Performance Art, MoMA
SESSION 3: NEW ARTISTIC PRACTICESJutta Koether, artist, writer, and Professor, Hochschule für bildende Künste (HfbK), HamburgJay Sanders, Curator of Performance, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New YorkSimon Leung, artist and Professor of Art, University of California, IrvineEmily Roysdon, artist and writer
Discussion moderated by Claire Bishop, Associate Professor in Art History, CUNY Graduate Center, New York
ARCHIVAL CASE STUDIES
Jonathan Lill, Project Archivist, MoMA; Michelle Elligott, Archivist, MoMA; and David Senior, Bibliographer, MoMA
Download the full symposium agenda in PDF format (Adobe Acrobat Reader required). examines the shifting conditions and rising popularity of performance-related art, and its evolving—and frequently ambivalent—relationship to the museum. What kinds of transformations or conditions might be necessary to create a meaningful or critically engaged performance art program within the museum?
