Periodic Reporting for period 1 - PERFORM (Performativity as Curatorial and Artistic Praxis)
Berichtszeitraum: 2022-09-01 bis 2024-08-31
Enter any contemporary art museum, gallery, or biennale in 2024, and chances are that performance art will be center “stage.” While historically marginalized in the art world, since the turn of the twenty-first century—and gaining momentum over the past decade—performance is being “exhibited” front and centre in major museums around the globe. Performance artists are taking home illustrious art world prizes, leading museums are inaugurating spaces designed exclusively to house live art, and the field of performance curation is gaining traction. Simultaneously, within academia, the concept of “performativity” is increasingly mobilized across the philosophy of language, deconstruction, gender and queer theory, critical race theory, and the recently founded interdisciplinary field of performance philosophy. There, it is used to theorize how language enacts that which it describes, how meaning is configured through intersubjective exchanges, and how (gendered, racial, sexual, and cultural) identities are formed and expressed.
It is within this cultural landscape, and in response to the above paradigmatic and epistemological shifts, that PERFORM emerged. The project sought to develop a theory of performativity as artistic and curatorial practice that would account for the importance of both performance and performativity in present-day European cultural practices informed by 21 st century identity politics. Its four main objectives were: O1) conducting research on contemporary European performance and curatorial practice; O2) training in live arts curation and professionalization skills; O3) disseminating research in academia; O4) communicating findings in the art world.
It is within this cultural landscape, and in response to the above paradigmatic and epistemological shifts, that PERFORM emerged. The project sought to develop a theory of performativity as artistic and curatorial practice that would account for the importance of both performance and performativity in present-day European cultural practices informed by 21 st century identity politics. Its four main objectives were: O1) conducting research on contemporary European performance and curatorial practice; O2) training in live arts curation and professionalization skills; O3) disseminating research in academia; O4) communicating findings in the art world.
O1: The PI conducted innovative research on performances by artists Anne Imhof (DE), Alexandra Bachzetsis (EL/CH), Alexandra Pirici (RO), and Ula Sickle (BE), and the curatorial programs of selected institutions that presented them, including La Biennale de Venezia (IT), Art Basel (CH), Centre Pompidou (FR), Stedelijk Museum (NL), Hamburger Bahnhof (DE), and MACBA (ES).
O2: The PI underwent training designed to equip her with the hard skills necessary to become a full researcher in performance philosophy, including taking courses in Spanish language and university teaching, as well as being mentored in data management and best practices in ethics.
O3/04): The PI disseminated and communicated her research on the performativity of contemporary artistic and curatorial practice through writing both peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, editing journal issues, and peaking at and organizing conferences and symposia attended by members of the academic and artistic communities.
O2: The PI underwent training designed to equip her with the hard skills necessary to become a full researcher in performance philosophy, including taking courses in Spanish language and university teaching, as well as being mentored in data management and best practices in ethics.
O3/04): The PI disseminated and communicated her research on the performativity of contemporary artistic and curatorial practice through writing both peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, editing journal issues, and peaking at and organizing conferences and symposia attended by members of the academic and artistic communities.
PERFORM enabled the PI to advance the state of the art by addressing the structural ties between theories of gender and linguistic performativity and the practices of a new generation of artists and curators showing their work in a selection of Europe’s foremost biennials, museums, and galleries. In this way, the project illuminated the role of performativity in contemporary European artistic and curatorial practice and addressed the current trend of exhibiting performance in major visual art world institutions. By exploring the ways in which these artists and their curators adopted dramaturgical, choreographic, compositional, and performative strategies in their exhibition of live bodies in spaces traditionally designed to collect and present inanimate objects, PERFORM responded to a major shift in contemporary art practice. By disseminating and communicating research within both academia and the art world, PERFORM fostered intersectoral dialogue. Through the project, the PI observed the privileged place that contemporary dance occupies within this shift in artistic praxis. As such, she plans to focus her subsequent research project on the ways in which the “dance exhibition” is challenging traditional art historical understandings of the archive, the collection, and even contemporary “art”.