Exhibiting Performance Art's History
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EXHIBITING PERFORMANCE ART’S HISTORY Harry Weil 100 Years (version #2, ps1, nov 2009), a group show at MoMA PS1, Long Island City, New York, November 1, 2009 –May 3, 2010 and Off the Wall: Part 1—Thirty Performative Actions, a group show at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City, July 1–September 19, 2010. he past decade has born witness 100 Years, curated by MoMA PS1 cura- to the proliferation of perfor- tor Klaus Biesenbach and art historian mance art in the broadest venues RoseLee Goldberg, structured a strictly Tyet seen, with notable retrospectives of linear history of performance art. A Marina Abramović, Gina Pane, Allan five-inch thick straight blue line ran the Kaprow, and Tino Sehgal held in Europe length of the exhibition, intermittently and North America. Performance has pierced by dates written in large block garnered a space within the museum’s letters. The blue path mimics the simple hallowed halls, as these institutions have red and black lines of Alfred Barr’s chart hurriedly begun collecting performance’s on the development of modern art. Barr, artifacts and documentation. As such, former director of MoMA, created a museums play an integral role in chroni- simple scientific chart for the exhibition cling performance art’s little-detailed Cubism and Abstract Art (1935) that history. 100 Years (version #2, ps1, nov streamlines the genealogy of modern 2009) at MoMA PS1 and Off the Wall: art with no explanatory text, reduc- Part 1—Thirty Performative Actions at ing it to a chronological succession of the Whitney Museum of American avant-garde movements. Similarly, the Art are two of the first major museum 100 Years exhibit considers the lineage exhibitions dedicated to constructing a of performance art without a pedagogic history of performance art. Both exhibi- structure. The blue line never winds or tions stray from placing performance in diverts off track. As a result, the only a socio-political context in favor of pre- relationship between the art works in senting a streamlined, palatable approach a given room was temporal proximity. to interpreting and assessing the lineage Themes that have continually surfaced of performance art. in performance art’s history, including feminism, political strife, and body © 2011 Harry Weil PAJ 98 (2011), pp. 65–71. 65 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00040 by guest on 25 September 2021 politics, are sidelined in favor of a tidily- Despite this lack of historical and con- told history. ceptual context, the curatorial choices for 100 Years were finely edited to include The first room greeted viewers with a luminaries in dance, theatre, and music call to arms to “sing the love of danger, integral to the conversation on perfor- the habit of energy and rashness,” a mance art, including John Cage, Martha quote from Filippo Marinetti’s Futur- Graham, Merce Cunningham, and Mer- ist Manifesto, which, coincidentally, edith Monk. Televisions looping various enjoyed its hundredth anniversary in performances were mounted on a plat- 2009. The exhibition coincided with the form running through the exhibition, third installment of Goldberg’s Performa providing the opportunity for viewers biennial, which celebrated the founding to capture the scope of performance as of Futurism. In this entry room, the it came to rely on film technologies in origins of performance art are imagined the 1960s. Headphones offered visitors as spawning from the socio-political private listening and an intimacy with discontent of a small avant-garde group the scenes transpiring on the screens. The within the established order, and reads two-hundred-plus videos, photographs, as a condensed version of Goldberg’s and posters were modestly installed; the landmark tome Performance Art: From worth of the exhibition is in the included Futurism to the Present (first published objects, not on the value curators have in 1974). The book, like the exhibi- given them. tion, is an uncomplicated reading of performance art history that flows neatly Objects kept to the walls of the galleries, from one early twentieth century art so from the center of a room visitors movement to the next, from Cubism to were provided an unfolding panorama the Bauhaus to Dada to Constructivism of performance art’s lineage. Static black and so on. and white photographic documentation lined the walls above the televisions However, despite MoMA’s vast hold- and depicted the fleeting moments of ings, the inclusion of artists’ activities performances. Compared to film docu- outside the production of performances mentation, photographic documentation was absent from the exhibition. The felt incomplete in evoking the moving curators failed to relate how these early bodies that constitute performances. avant-garde groups were integral to the And when compared to live reperfor- development of modern art in challeng- mances, photographs remain inadequate ing how audiences engaged with paint- in realizing the corporeal and tactile ing and sculpture while simultaneously nature of the original live performance. experimenting in performance practices. Nonetheless, I am reminded of Philip Work by Futurist Giacomo Balla would Auslander’s argument that documenta- have put Marinetti’s manifesto into better tion is not merely a stand-in but itself context of the group’s interest in captur- constitutes the work of performance, ing dynamic movement of the industrial thereby allowing the performances of age. Similarly, the work of Pablo Picasso the past to be as actively engaging as or Georges Braque would have put into they were in the present. He suggests context the repetitive forms of Fernand that performance documentation “brings Léger’s film Mechanical Ballet. the object to us and reactivates it for us 66 PAJ 98 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00040 by guest on 25 September 2021 to experience in our time and place, our or promote me. I didn’t have a gallery. own particular situation.”1 It is not that I was out there alone.”3 Performance art we are transported back to the space of has come a long way from being a small the original performance when looking group of art world radicals to being the at the photograph—rather, as Aulander subject of highly acclaimed exhibitions elaborates: “[it is as if they] were per- across the globe. Because there is a forming the piece for me, in my study, gap in the collecting and exhibiting of as I imaginatively recreate the perfor- performance art, museums have made mance from its documentation. The it their prerogative to be integral in performance I thus experience unfolds creating a history that is still unfold- in my present (even as I remain aware ing. In discussing the reperformance of its historical status).”2 of Identical Lunch planned for January 2011, Knowles enthusiastically describes Documentation’s ability to transmit performance art’s newfound acceptance: the experience of a live performance is “It is very clear that museums have exemplified in Guido van der Werve’s caught up the artists. You would never video Nummer Acht (Everything is going see performances at MoMA ten years to be alright) (2007). The video transmits ago. Now, they have a good function- an unearthly dread as the artist walks ing library and performances there with just ahead of a gargantuan icebreak- three or four curators for performance. It ing ship as it plows through the frozen is huge. I need to have an electric blender waters of Finland’s Gulf of Bothnia. for Identical Lunch and I have a choice The towering ship threatens not only of who I can call to get one!”4 to destroy the landscape but the artist too. His harrowing feat is much more In considering how a new generation dangerous then anything attempted by figures into the shifting perceptions of Chris Burden, whose Shoot (1971) or performance art in museums, 100 Years Transfixed (1974) pales in comparison finely edited together a glimpse into to being crushed under the weight of what may be ahead. The exhibition ends a ship. While Burden performed for with Ryan Trecartin’s K-Corea INC.K small groups of friends and associates (section A). At the age of twenty-four he on the street or in alternative spaces, had his first museum exhibition and has van der Werve’s performances rely on quickly climbed the ladder to stardom. high-budgeted production teams, and His plotless video is a hypnotic and gra- they are consciously made for inclusion tuitous collection of sights and sounds in a museum or gallery. made in a YouTube-style aesthetic, a commentary on the amateurishness and Performance’s acceptance in the art exposure that have become markers of market comes at a price as a younger the digital age. His video echoes Nam generation of performers is interested in June Paik’s experiments using technology exceeding their predecessors and has the to transform how art objects are created funds to do so. Alison Knowles, in dis- and experienced. Trecartin’s work pales cussing her work with Fluxus, describes in comparison to his predecessor, as his how ostracizing the art world was for investment in digital technologies is performance in the 1960s: “I had no merely a footnote to Paik’s legacy. Yet, access to an art world that would fund in including Trecartin, it is obvious that WEIL / Exhibiting Performance Art’s History 67 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00040 by guest on 25 September 2021 Top: 100 Years (version #2, ps1, nov 2009). Photo: Summer Kemick. Courtesy of MoMA PS1. Bottom: Off the Wall: Part 1—Thirty Performative Actions. Photo: Sheldan C. Collins. Courtesy of Whitney Museum of American Art.