ESTHER MARVETA NEFF b. 1984, Goshen, Indiana, USA

EDUCATION • BFA, Performance Concentration, University of Michigan, MI, m. 2006

AFFILIATIONS

Founder/Director/Lead Artist Panoply Performance Laboratory (PPL) 2006-present PPL is a performative thinktank and flexible ensemble. PPL’s operations include operas, performance art works, videos, dances, installations as well as institutional critique projects, curatorial and organizational projects, situations, discursive projects, experimental philosophy, conferences and symposia. PPL is also physical, public lab site and performance space in Brooklyn (104 Meserole St. in Brooklyn, NY).

Founding Member No Wave Performance Task Force (NWPTF) / Feminist Art Group (FAG) 2012-present Collective performances/actions at: DIA: Beacon, Fitness Center for Arts and Tactics, Grace Exhibition Space, IV Soldiers Gallery, Vaudeville Park, Rosekill, Dixon Place, The Woods Gallery, on the street.

Founding Member Social Health Performance Club 2014-present Performance artist collective dealing with intersectional (BIPOC + LGBTQAI) identity politics and independent/anti- capitalist modes of production. Exhibitions of live art at Queens Museum, JACK, ABC No Rio, Movement Research, Abrons, all NYC.

Instigator Brooklyn International Performance Foundation (BIPAF) 2013-present A collaborative entity that organizes conferences, festivals, conventions, grant programs, touring exhibitions and other projects as performative works of constructive institutional critique and investigation of “institution” as a verb.

Member ABC No Rio Visual Arts Committee

PERFORMANCE ART (note: COLLAB, as/with PPL or SOLO pieces)

2017

SOLO—PROTAGONY ACTION I, The Ear, curated by Polina Riabova, NYC SOLO—An Augury, commissioned for the WAKE Festival in Folkestone, UK PPL—You Don’t Have to Look at This, as part of Archive I at Le Petit Versaille, NYC PPL—Fairly Difficult and Unreasonable Activities, Bronx Museum, as part of ITINERANT Performance Art Festival, NYC SOLO—Pathway (in)Dependence, INVERSE Performance Art Festival, University of Arkansas, Lafayetteville, AK

2016

COLLAB—Feet on the Ground, with Maria Hupfield and IV Castellanos as part of #callresponse at Grunt Gallery in Vancouver and MAW gallery and Bullet Space in NYC, Saw Gallery in Ottawa (2017) upcoming at Elizabeth Foundation in NYC (2018) SOLO—Artificial Affaction Schema, 6-hour workshop performance, Gruentaler9, Berlin, DE SOLO—The Scraping Shape of the Socially Cyclomythic Womb, 2.5 hour interactive performance work as part of Tempting Failure International Performance Art Festival, London, UK PPL—Three Failed Intentions, 1 hour performance art piece, Pittsburgh Performance Art Festival, Bunker Projects/SPACE, Pittsburgh, PA SOLO—Affaction Research Center, 5-day relational/discursive project, Rapid Pulse 2016 at Defibrillator Performance Art Gallery, Chicago, IL PPL—Relational March: (MI)Rage, 23 day-relational thinktank tour, new performances each day (select sites include: Michigan Institute for Contemporary Art [Lansing], Spread Art/CAID [Detroit], No Nation [Chicago], Ohio State University [Columbus]) travel in a rental car funded by busking/performances in bars, on the street, etc. PP—(de)liberation III: Spring/Break Art Show, COPY/PASTE, curated by Jodie Lyn-Kee-Chow, Moynihan Station, NYC

2015

SOLO—ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, performance at PS69 in Jackson Heights during ITINERANT, curated by Hector Canonge, Queens, NY SOLO—Queer Mother Courage, performance at Abrons Arts Center as part of Social Health Performance Club during the Queer NY Festival PPL—A Philosophy of Significant Patterns, interactive experimental philosophy, 7hr durational on Spectacle Island in Boston Harbor, curated by Alice Vogler and Vela Phelan as part of the Island Arts Initiative and TIME BODY SPACE OBJECTS SOLO—Apply to the Great American Performance Art Festival, a durational discursive performance (5hrs) as part of Great American Performance Art Festival, GHS, NYC PPL—NF Redux, a social performance and short-form action during the month of May as part of Month of Performance Art Berlin and the exhibitions Post-Coital Tristesse at Meinblau Atelier, DE PPL—Do I Do, 4-day collaborative situation/experimental philosophy, Gruentaler9, Berlin, DE SOLO—Diagram Your Artistic Practice, discursive system for Curating Performance as Performance Practice conference, Berlin, DE SOLO—Critical Eye Contact, interactive interpretive tour/discursive activities performed at The New Museum as part of AUNTS for Camera exhibition

2014

PPL—Relational March: MAROONING, travel and performances across 23 cities in the USA, including performances at: University of Kentucky, Ohio State University, High Concept Laboratories (Chicago), Charlotte Street Settlement (Kansas City), Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit. Documented/framed by texts on culturebot at www.culturebot.org/author/panoplylab/ PPL—Magnetics is Abstraction. Sculpture/performance art English Kills Gallery as part of GROKNOTT exhibition SOLO—Archiving the Now, discursive performances, Glasshouse Projects, Brooklyn, NY and as part of the NYU Radical Archiving Conference PPL—Center for Marooned Citizens, social research performed on the street at The New Museum/Bowery Mission, ABC No Rio, and Clemente Soto Velez as part of the Undergroundzero Festival, June 2014 and culminated online at panoplylab.org/thecenter/

2013

PPL—Magnetics is Abstraction I, Recession Art, NYC PPL—Trash or Kroner? During Hitparaden: The Best Performance Art of 2013, Copenhagen, DK, curated by Henrik Vestegaard Friis/liveart.dk SOLO—Untitled Social Experiments, (CON)temporary Spacetime, Leibig12 and AquaBit Berlin, DE/Taipei, Taiwan SOLO—Simulation of Cultural Ties, site-specific public action traveling with participants, Bushwick, Brooklyn, Vaudeville Park, IV Soldiers Gallery as part of iCan exhibition/project PPL—sitting in a room different from the one you are in now, right now, 109 Gallery, Brooklyn, NY COLLAB—Zygoat, with IV Castellanos at Glasshouse Projects, 24-hour interactive performance, commissioned as part of 7 Invitations, Brooklyn, NY

2012

PPL—doughnuts 1, MANA Contemporary, curated by Threewalls Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL SOLO—Protoceptive Responses, Defibrillator Performance Art Gallery, Chicago, IL PPL—PPL Help the Water, during To the Stars on the Wings of an Eel, Gowanus Ballroom, along Gowanus Canal, Brooklyn, NY PPL—HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR MONOLITH, IV Soldiers Gallery, Brooklyn, NY COLLAB—BABY BABY BABY, wth Anya Liftig, during Month of Performance Art-Berlin, ACUD Serendipity Gallery, Berlin, DE PPL—Birdhouse Home Craft Project for Fathers and Daughters, Casita Maria Center for the Arts, Bronx, NY PPL—The Common Thread, during Dimanche Rouge/Spread Art, Spread Art/Dimanche Rouge, Brooklyn, NY/Paris, FR

A FEW…2006-2011

PPL—Calmly Engaged, sensorial interaction and installation performed durationally at Flux Factory, Wildlife Loft, NYC PPL—How to Answer to the Problems during BABEL, Queens Media Arts Development, a Pop-Up Exhibition, Queens, NY COLLA—Qualia, with audience, playwright Matthew Stephen Smith, composer Brian McCorkle, a social experiment at Brooklyn Arts Exchange (BAX), Brooklyn, NY PPL—The Silviculture Museum, 2 months of installation/performances/software/video, a miniature museum in a chashama window space on 37th Street in NYC COLLAB—The Institute for Local Discovery Proudly Presents Bavaria Rundgang. Social project between NYC and Munich, DE as Intergalaktische Interverein social performance and installation on the Theresienwiese, Munich, DE COLLAB—Fallstudies, a collaboration with Dina Keller, The Internationalists, The Public Theater, NYC COLLAB—7 Deadly Sins, an interactive installation and social project in collaboration with Dina Keller, The Secret Theater Gallery, Queens, NY

VISUAL ARTS GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2017 Broken Boxes, form&concept gallery, Santa Fe, NM #callresponse, travelling exhibition across Canada and USA (sculpture, ephemera, performances listed in CV above) Becoming Constellation, Lubomirov / Angus-Hughes, London, UK

2016 Artifacts and After Effects, Westbeth Gallery, NYC Governor’s Island Art Fair, installation on Governors Island, NYC LUMEN, Atlantic Salt, Staten Island Arts Council Gallery, NYC

2015 Restrictions, Limitations, Confinements, Maria Casita Center for Arts and Education, Bronx, NYC I Am Sitting in a Room, 109 Gallery, Brooklyn, NY (accompanied by live performance) Aftermath: Armory Art Fair After Hours, Glasshouse Gallery, Brooklyn, NY 2014

Don’t Think About Amputation, IV Soldiers Gallery, Brooklyn, NY Salonukah, Recession Art, Brooklyn, NY Summer Group Exhibition, The Living Gallery, Brooklyn, NY MDW Art Fair, Mana Contemporary, Chicago, IL

2013

Feministisches Statuarisches, Theresienweise Pop-Up, Munich, DE LOVE, IV Soldiers Gallery, Brooklyn, NY

OPERAS OF OPERATIONS / SOLO EXHIBITIONS NOTE: “operas of operations” have been produced as “solo exhibitions” in visual arts contexts and as “productions” in theater/dance contexts, as well as “research projects” in academic and underground contexts

Embarrassed of the Whole (EotW) (2015-2017) Interactive processes, workshops, and interactive/survey-based task-social and digital performances, month of user- generated operations, culminating live actions and exhibition. Project in three phases: PHASE I: 50+ individual operations across the USA, including at: LACUNA and Composition Gallery, Portland, OR The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Practice, to Practice The Wild Project, Grey Spaces/Special Effects Festival, NYC (2014 and 2016) Dixon Place, performance-works-in-progress Villa Victoria Center for the Arts, Boston, TODO BAJO CONTROL (can I lift you up/can you lift me up?) MAD Theory Performance Philosophy conference, Do-Nots online process and live performance ]performance space[ in London as part of Alternatives to Now Vox Populi, Philadelphia PHASE II: Month-long operation of 60+ individual “userships,” across and throughout February 2017 PHASE III “presentation of research” in the form of a 3-hour opera performed with students at Salisbury University, accompanied by a visual arts exhibition at the Electronics Gallery (Sept 29-Oct 14) and additional performances at WORK Gallery and residency at the Chance House in John Cage Memorial Park.

Any Size Mirror is a Dictator (2012-2014) A “temporary culture” devised over the course of 3 years in collaboration with choreographer Lindsey Drury, culminating 7 weeks of exhibition performance, workshop, and evolving installation processes, printed opera Book. Selected performances of work-in-progress and processes during devising period: Movement Research Spring Festival, ISSUE: Project Room Flux Factory Gibney Dance, work-in-progress showing Dixon Place, performance-works-in-progress 7-WEEKS OF ACCUMULATING PERFORMANCE: Sept 5-Oct 12, 2014 at Momenta Art

You’re a Big Boy Now or Rauschenberg Ist Tödlich (2012-2013) Operating restaurant and installation with menu of interactions, fabrications of foods and objects 12-HOUR PERFORMANCE: Fitness Center for Arts and Tactics in NYC, January 2012 4-DAY PERFORMANCE: Gruentaler9, Berlin, DE, May, 2013

Any Size Mirror is a Dictator (Prequel): Homage to Allan Kaprow (2013) 6-hour set of social processes commissioned by Glasshouse Projects, realized at Walgreens, a baseball diamond, a BP gas station, opera book and score learned from video and text: 9 HOUR PERFORMANCE: Glasshouse Art Life Lab, NYC, October 2013

NATURE FETISH (2012) A two-year project on “the nature of nature” and nature vs. culture dichotomies, with Focus Workshops and collaborations across spheres. Selected processes during devising period: Center for Performance Research, NYC Bronx Artspace, during ITINERANT, curated by Hector Canonge, Bronx, NY KuLe Theatre/Galerie, Berlin, DE/Sydney, AU MONTH OF PERFORMANCES/NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM: Grace Exhibition Space and the streets of Bed-Stuy, NYC, July 5-26, 2012

The Transformational Grammar of the Institutional Glorybowl: Institute_Institut (2011) Documentary opera processes on relationships between human bodies and institutional bodies, devised through LPAC Residency at LaGuardia Community College. Select performances during devising period: SALON at University Settlement Dixon Place performance-works-in-progress Judson Church SuperFront Gallery Public Summer at Industry City BOB the Pavilion at Columbia University Recording: produced by Gold Bolus Records (2014) 6 1HR PERFORMANCES: The Cell, NYC, October 9-16, 2011

The Last Dreams of Helene Weigel OR How to Get Rid of The Feminism Once and For All (2010) Documentary opera on feminism, womanism, Helene Weigel, and Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz. Performed during/at: POST-TV at Cabinet Magazine Event Space (televised performance of opera) ABC No Rio Gallery exhibition (3 performances) 12 2HR PERFORMANCES: Surreal Estate, NYC, July 1-30, 2010

The Transformational Grammar of the Institutional Glorybowl: Workforce/Forced Work (2009-2010) A project on labor practices with video choir and installation a bank vault across from the NY Stock Exchange and then in an abandoned shoe store. Devised at 14 Wall Street (LMCC Swing Space) 2 MONTHS OF PERFORMANCES: chashama site on 42nd St. NYC, May 6-18, 2010

On the Cranial Nerves of Barbarians (2007-2008) A documentary folk-operetta about Georg Buchner’s Woyzek and the birth of neuroscience, communism, and psychoanalysis. Performed: Dixon Place performance-works-in-progress (1 performance) Richmond Shepherd Theater (1 week) PRODUCTION: Manhattan Theatre Source (2 weeks)

The Transformational Grammar of the Institutional Glorybowl: Schooled and Unschooled (2006) Yearlong project devised through Focus Workshops and performances on institutional education. Accompanied by video installation. PRODUCTION: Dixon Place on the Bowery (4 nights), West End Theater (4 nights)

SELECTED RECENT & ONGOING ORGANIZATION/CURATION

--PPL a space organized as a social arts project and laboratory is located at 104 Meserole Street (since 2012), hosting projects, performances, and other situations. Organized/curated by Esther Neff, members of a flexible committee, via chain-curation/recommendation by artists in the community, and resident artists.

--JUST SITUATIONS: A Performative Convention, 8-day “convention” of situational projects, organized in collaboration with Leili Huzaibah, Kaia Gilje, and the 60+ participating situators/artists, July 2017

-- PERFORMANCY FORUM, a monthly platform for social arts practices and performance. Sessions have been held at MANA Contemporary in Chicago, Columbia University (BOB the Pavilion/The Poop Project), Grace Exhibition Space, PPL Space, SUPERFRONT, Meinblau e.V. and elsewhere in NYC and Berlin, DE. 2009-present (monthly), 12-day performance of a conference PERFORMANCY FORUM QUINQUENNIAL October 8-26, 2015 (listed in Top 10 Exhibitions in NYC that year by Hyperallergic).

--Sounding the Alarm: Theories of the Anti-Sight, an exhibition of 13 fellow interdisciplinary performance-makers and collective exhibition in Berlin, DE, 2015

--Brooklyn International Performance Art Festival (BIPAF), A work of institutional critique evaluating and constructing platforms as aligned with “performance art” practices. 230 participants made 48 events across 12 spaces and 9 public sites, July 4-29, 2013. Continued projects under the name “Brooklyn International Performance Art Foundation.”

--Rebuttals, Proofs, Theorems, and Propositions: A Conference of Theoretical Theater, two-week conference of performance theory organized with Yelena Gluzman (This is a Science Project) at Glasshouse Projects, guest speakers/presenters Chakravorty Gayatri Spivak, Robert Ashley, Douglas Barrett, plenaries Kikuko Tanaka, Reality Research Center, Mike Taylor. September, 2013

--iCan Exhibition and Social Performance Project, organized with IV Soldiers Gallery/IV Castellanos, with temporary collective “iCan” investigating “sustainability” of artistic practices, labor, and environmental impact, funded by can-collecting for the 10c return, June-September 2012

--Compendium: Technics, a conference investigating technique, technicality, and technology with temporary collective The Compendium, Center for Performance Research (CPR), June 2012

-- Conference of Work: Collaborations and Participations, a conference of social artists, Grace Exhibition Space, Vaudeville Park, November 2011

--Conference of Works: MODE, METHOD, MEDIUM, A conference of social artists, University of the Streets, May, 2011

-- Artist exchanges and exhibitions with the Immaterial Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh, UK, the Boston collective Petricore, LABBODIES lead by Ada Pinkston and Hoesy Corona, D.C-based artists lead by Eames Armstrong, students from the Art Institute of Chicago, and many other exchanges with artists and collectives from Pittsburgh, Oakland, Portland, Detroit, Cincinnati, Kansas City, Atlanta, Boston, Zurich, Mexico City, Lima, Paris, Warsaw, and elsewhere. 2012-present

--Independent Curation: LUMEN (Staten Island annual Video and Performance Festival) 2014, 2015, exhibitions of performance at ABC No Rio (Affect Surgery, The Embodiment Ball(bearings), Interior Interruptions at Bullet Space), NYFA benefit 2010, regular one-night exhibitions/”shows” of performance art across various galleries, spaces, and public sites in NYC

SELECTED LECTURES AND WORKSHOPS Now There’s a Diagram For Ya: Performance and/as Thought: 3-hour workshop at Salisbury University Natures of Significance: Performance as Discursive Apparatus, day-long seminar for SVA, 2017 Impotency/Direct Democracy, Workshop at Brooklyn Studios for Dance, 2016 Inside/Outside: Workshop for residents of SVA’s summer City as Site program, 2016 Performance Art Documentation and History, workshops at School of Visual Arts, NYC 2015 -16 Tractate Technics, workshop as part of the School of Making Thinking’s conference "Words and [_]" a durational conference" at the Darling Foundry, Montreal, Canada, 2016 (de)liberating performance: workshop as part of GET YOUR A$$ IN CLA$$ at Abrons Arts Center Radical Constructivism in Performance workshop, Massachusetts College of Art and Design Democratizing Performance: lecture at Reverse Space Minding Performance, lecture at Clemente Soto Velez and roundtable talk with a neurologist, a philosopher of mind, and a psychologist PERFORMANCY: play/lecture performed by BlackSheep Collective at Counterpath (Denver) University of Kentucky (Lexington) Against Professionalism in Theater: interactive lecture at The New School

Participation in playwright/librettist/poet reading events and talks at Abrons Arts Center, Dixon Place (Poets and Writers), Wendy’s Subway Reading Room at BAM, Invisible Dog, etc.

SELECTED PUBLICATION AND PUBLIC SPHERE Performing Conferencing: SMT’s Words and […] a durational conference (culturebot, 2016) WHAT WILL WE DO, AND HOW WILL WE SURVIVE DOING IT? Ayana Evans and Arahmaiani (Hyperallergic, 2016) Essay, Opera as Operations, New Music Yearbook, 2015 Book: ASMIAD/DAISM: 2014 Essay, 7 Invitations (book), Practice, to Practice, Glasshouse Gallery, 2014 Essay, PERI0D Magazine Touring and Fear, 2014 Catalog Essay, Kikuko Tanaka’s Poultry Paradise and Its Discontents, 2013 Interview, Resisting Commodity, GritTV with Laura Flanders, July 2013 Catalog Essay, Chloe Bass’ The Bureau of Self Recognition, 2012 Nociception Theatrician blog, Discipline in our Time: Rants of a Wartime Performance Artist and other texts Drearysomebody, Escaping the Fabrication of Art (in conversation with Lindsey Drury) Essay, Hyperallergic, Performance Art and You, 2013

SELECTED RESIDENCIES, GRANTS, AND AWARDS Residency, Chance House at John Cage Memorial Park, 2017 WAKE Fellowship,Live Art Development Agency, UK, 2017 Emergency Grant, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, 2016 RAPID PULSE Selected Artist, 2016 Live Art Development Agency support for Tempting Failure Selected Artist, London, UK, 2016 Residency, Grüntaler9, Berlin, DE, 2015 and 2013 Culture Push Fellowship for Utopian Practices (with Yelena Gluzman), 2012 Residency, Grace Exhibition Space, July 2012 Residency at LaGuardia Community College at the LaGuardia Center for Performing Arts, 2011 NYSCA IND-TIER Grant, the Brooklyn Arts Council, 2011, to write “libretto” for Institute_Institut IRT 3-B residency, 2010 chashama residency on 42nd Street, 2009 LMCC Swing Space at 14 Wall Street, 2009 Surreal Estate resident artist 2009-2012 chashama window grant, 37th St, October 2008

JOBS Teaching Artist, Wingspan Arts, 2014-present Fabricator: Freelance, Geoff Howell Studios, for Yvonne Meier, etc 2006-present Illustrator and Graphic Designer (freelance), 2008-present Psychic and Tarot reader for hire, 2004-present Freelance Grant Consultant, 2008-2015 Andrew W. Mellon Theater Program Manager, 2009-2011 Development Associate, The New York Foundation for the Arts, 2006-2009

Inquire for resumes involving performance in the work of other artists, curation/organization,