Performa Archive

With the exhibition Performa Archive, CC offered a rare glimpse into the legendary works created for and performed at the performance biennial Performa in New York. In a weekly film programme visitors could experience the documentation of some of the most prominent contemporary performances created by renowned artists including Elmgreen and Dragset, Yvonne Rainer, and William Kentridge.

With the exhibition Performa Archive, CC marked Performa’s indisputable significance for the development and propagation of performance art within the past two decades. The exhibition offered Danish audiences a unique opportunity to get to know some of the most prominent performance works created during the period 2005-2017.

Performa Archive presented thirty full-length recordings spread over a week, all selected from more than seventy specially commissioned works in the Performa archives. During the week visitors could experience a wide range of performance art, for instance Elmgreen and Dragset’s humorous and dark institution-critical work Happy Days in the Art World (2011) and Yvonne Rainer’s dance performance RoS Indexical (2007), a reinterpretation of Igor Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite of Spring. Visitors could see and listen to Ragnar Kjartansson’s twelve-hour-long opera Bliss (2011) or the composer Arnold Schönberg’s German musical comedy Erwartung, restaged by the South-African Robin Rhode and performed at Times Square in 2015.

For the first time in an exhibition context, recordings of works from Performa 17 were shown, including William Kentridge’s expressive interpretation of Kurt Schwitter’s Ursonate and the South-African Kemang Wa Lehulere’s extensive performance I cut my skin to liberate the splinter, an encounter of sound and movement inspired by African children’s games. Kemang Wa Lehulere’s work was later acquired by Tate Modern, London, for its collection.

About Performa

Performa was founded as an organisation in 2004 by the acclaimed art historian RoseLee Goldberg whose time-honoured research into performance art has proved epoch-making for the genre. As the leading organisation dedicated to research into performance art, Performa addresses the role of this art form in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. At the heart of Performa is the biennial of the same name, forming the context for interdisciplinary works and special events involving dance, film, music, and architecture. Every other year in November, New York is transformed into the ’capital of performance art’ where visitors can explore the city and the pioneering performances – a wholly unique art scene.
For each Performa event, new works are commissioned, developed specifically for the biennial by artists from a variety of disciplines. With these commissioned works, Performa often invites artists who have not previously worked with this art form to create performances for the first time. Over the years, some of the most influential names in contemporary art and performance have been engaged and invited to create works in new formats and explore new directions.

Since ​​New York’s first performance biennial in 2005, the organisation has established its identity as a commissioning and producing entity. Like a museum without walls, Performa is a vital platform for presenting and developing the live art forms. The biennial attracts a huge national and international audience with more than 200,000 visitors. Since 2005, Performa has presented almost six hundred works, collaborated with seven hundred artists, and toured with works in twenty countries.

The exhibition at CC was made possible in collaboration with Performa, New York, and the Whitechapel Gallery, London. In 2017 Whitechapel Gallery presented the exhibition Commissions from Performa’s Archives: 2005-2015.

Information

Works from Performa 05, 07, 11, 13, 15, and 17 were screened on different weekdays. The programme is available below.

WEDNESDAY PROGRAM

Performa 05

Jesper Just (b. 1974, Denmark)
True Love is Yet to Come, 2005
Duration: 00:21:49
Start: 11.10; 15.58

Performa 07

Francesco Vezzoli (b. 1971, Italy)
Right You Are (If You Think You Are), 2007
Duration: 01:18:05
Start: 11.33; 16.21

Adam Pendleton (b. 1984, USA)
The Revival
Duration: 01:06:07
Start: 12.52; 17.40

Christian Jankowski (b. 1968, Germany)
Rooftop Routine, 2007
Duration: 00:04:27
Start: 13.59

Isaac Julien (b. 1960, UK) and Russell Maliphant (b. 1961, Canada)
Cast No Shadow, 2007
Duration: 00:33:41 (final part)
Start: 14.06

Sanford Biggers (b. 1970, USA)
The Somethin’ Suite, 2007
Duration: 00:27:47
Start: 14.39

Kelly Nipper (b. 1971, USA)
Floyd on the Floor, 2007
Duration: 00:06:03
Start: 15.08

Yvonne Rainer (b. 1934, USA)
RoS Indexical, 2007
Duration: 00:42:25
Start: 15.15

THURSDAY PROGRAM

Performa 09

Arto Lindsay (b. 1953, USA)
Somewhere I Read, 2009
Duration: 00:22:51
Start: 11.10; 14.48

Omer Fast (b. 1972, Israel)
Talk Show, 2009
Duration: 01:05:00
Start: 11.34; 15.12

Candice Breitz (b. 1972, South Africa)
New York, New York, 2009
Duration: 00:55:08
Comprised of four interviews and a performance in two acts
Start: 12.45; 16.17

Mike Kelley (1954-2012, USA)
The Offer (Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstruction #33), 2009
Duration: 01:10:25
Start: 13.36; 17.08

FRIDAY PROGRAM

Performa 11

Elmgreen (b. 1961, Denmark) and Dragset (b. 1969, Norway)
Happy Days in the Art World, 2011
Duration: 01:16:21
Start: 11.10; 15.33

Liz Magic Laser (b. 1981, USA)
I Feel Your Pain, 2011
Duration: 01:21:54
Start: 12.28; 16.50

Ragnar Kjartansson (b. 1976, Iceland)
Bliss, 2011
Exerpt: 00:11:07
Start: 13.51

Mika Rottenberg (b. 1976, Argentina) & Jon Kessler (b. 1956, USA)
New York Close Up + Seven, 2011
Total duration: 00:45:17
Start:14.03

iona rozeal brown (b. 1966, USA)
battle of yestermore, 2011
Duration: 00:42:26
Start: 14.49

SATURDAY PROGRAM

Performa 13

Raqs Media Collective (est. 1992, India)
The Last International, 2013
Duration: 00:43:13
Start:11.10; 14.56

Tori Wrånes (b. 1978, Norway)
Yes Nix, 2013
Duration: 00:29:54
Start: 11.55; 15.40

Performa 15

Wyatt Kahn (b. 1983, USA)
Work, 2015
Duration: 00:32:58
Start: 12.26; 16.11

Jérôme Bel (b. 1964, France)
Ballet (New York), 2015
Duration: 00:26:01
Start: 13.00; 16.46

Robin Rhode (b. 1976, South Africa)
Arnold Schoenberg’s Erwartung – A performance by Robin Rhode, 2015
Duration: 00:29:53
Start: 13.27; 17.14

Oscar Murillo (b. 1986, Colombia)
Lucky dip, 2015
Duration: 00:04:08
Start: 13.58; 17.45

Edgar Arceneaux (b. 1972, USA)
Until, Until, Until…, 2015
Duration: 00:51:29
Start: 14.03; 17.50

SUNDAY PROGRAM

Performa 17

William Kentridge (b. 1955, South Africa)
Ursonate, 2017
Duration: 00:33:34
Start: 11.10; 16.17

Kemang Wa Lehulere (b. 1984, South Africa)
I cut my skin to liberate the splinter, 2017
Duration: 00:36:12
Start: 11.44; 16.51

Yto Barrada (b. 1971, Paris)
Tree Identification for Beginners, 2017
Duration: 00:35:16
Start: 12.21; 17.28

Jimmy Robert (b. 1975, Guadeloupe, France)
Imitation of Lives, 2017
Duration: 00:46:41
Start: 12.57

Kris Lemslau (b. 1985, Estonia)
Going, Going, 2017
Duration: 00:25:43
Start: 13.44

Brian Belott (b. 1973, USA)
People Pie Pool, 2017
Duration: 01:31:00
Start: 14.10

Mohau Modisakeng (b. 1986, South Africa)
ZION, 2017
Duration: 00:29:00
Start: 15.42

Kelly Nipper (b. 1971, USA)
Terre Mechanique, 2017
Duration: 00:06:29
Start:16.12