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Thursday, November 15, 2012
7:00pm-8:30pm
Powell Family Cinema

FREE

Join us for a program this Thursday evening that pairs films made by Daria Martin and Laurie Simmons, two artists who break down the boundaries between dance, visual art, and music, in work that shares a highly aestheticized exterior belying more complex and disturbing content. The elegant work of British artist Daria Martin—“In the Palace” (2000), “Loneliness and the Modern Pentathlon” (2004-5), and “Harpstrings & Lava” (2007)—presents the human body as a mechanized and abstract container for rich emotions, composed with the eye of a painter for two-dimensional surfaces and the mind of a filmmaker for visceral three-dimensional perspectives. Laurie Simmons, best known for her large-scale puppet-based photographs from the 1980s, made her directorial debut with “The Music of Regret” (2006), a three-act musical that uses puppets to enact tales of ambition, disappointment, love, loss, and regret, suggesting the darker side of domesticity, and the fragile ecology of everyday life. The program will run approximately 80 minutes.

Undergraduate students in the Contemporary Art course this fall have written reviews of Performance Now. We will be posting some of them here over the coming days. Links to the first several are offered below.

“Translating Performance,” by Nicholas Kokkinis

“Exhibition Review,” by Dandara Catete

“Action! at Zilkha,” by Armani White

Students of the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance have crafted reflections on specific works in Performance Now. Click here to read them.

Performance Now

Guest Curator RoseLee Goldberg
Organized by Independent Curators International, New York and Performa, New York
Friday, September 7 through Sunday, December 9, 2012
Closed November 21 through November 26, 2012
Opening Reception: Tuesday, September 11, 2012,
5pm-7pm; Gallery Talk at 5:30pm by RoseLee Goldberg
FREE!

In her groundbreaking book Performance Art: From Futurism To The Present (1979 and 2011), art historian and curator RoseLee Goldberg shows that performance is central to the history of 20th century art and that it is a driving force in shaping contemporary art today. In 2005, she launched Performa 05, the first biennial of visual art performance, and predicted that performance would become “the medium of the 21st century.” Indeed, its time has come. Performance Now is an exhibition that will debut at Wesleyan, and show how performance has come to be at the center of the discussion on the latest developments in contemporary art and culture. Bringing together some of the most significant artists working today, this exhibition surveys the most critical and experimental currents in performance over the last ten years from around the globe. Segments of the exhibition featuring video, film and photography, by artists including Marina Abramovic, William Kentridge, Clifford Owens and Laurie Simmons, will be showcased in Zilkha Gallery. The exhibition also extends to a film series, selected by Performa film curator Lana Wilson ’05. 

Performance Now is co-sponsored by the Department of Art and Art History and the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance. Performance Now is a traveling exhibition produced by Independent Curators International (ICI), New York, and Performa, New York. The curator for the exhibition is RoseLee Goldberg, Artistic Director and founder of Performa. The exhibition and tour are made possible, in part, by grants from the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; the ICI Board of Trustees; and donors to ICI’s Access Fund. Presented in association with Wesleyan’s Institue for Curatorial Practice in Performance (ICPP).