Asli Çavuşoğlu - Words Dash Against the Façade

As part of the opening of the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture in Moscow and Performa collaborative exhibition 33 Fragments of Russian Performance (curated by Yulia Askenova), Russian artist Andrey Kuzkin will premiere a new performance in the Performa Hub. Andrey Kuzkin (b. 1971 Moscow. Lives and works in Moscow) is a significant performance artist working within the Moscow art scene. He came to prominence with the performance “Full Circle” as part of the 1st Moscow International Biennale for Young Art. He won the 4th Annual Russian national award for contemporary visual arts "Innovation" (2009, nomination “New Generation”) and the “Soratnik” Prize in 2009.

Do you want rock-hard abs? Slimmer hips and firmer buttocks? Do you reject the idea of autonomous art? Join Tyler Ashley and his group of dancers - the SARAHS - in today's most comprehensive exercise and education program in Constructivism! Don’t miss this opportunity to explore Constructivist concerns about the arrangement and power of the body in space through a unique mash-up of aerobics class clichés and a 19th century Czech “slet.” With explosive movement, live music, and audience interaction, Ashley and the SARAHS probe Constructivist preachings and design. Direction by Tyler Ashley. Choreography by Tyler Ashley and the SARAHS (Tyler Ashley, Ethan Baldwin, Hooba Booba, Sarah Donnelly, Zoe Farmingdale, Sarah Holcman, Benjamin Kimitch, Cacá Macedo, Rakia Seaborn, Kris Seto, Ashley Walters, Theodor Wilson). Music and Sound by Theodor Wilson. Costumes designed by Alyssa Tang and Sole Salvo, inspired by Stepanova. Production Manager, Sarah Donnelly. Press Manager, Victoria Michelotti. The performance will begin on the High Line in the Chelsea Market Passage, near West 16th Street, and move south to The Standard, New York near Little West 12th Street.

Musée de la Danse: Expo Zéro is a living exhibition created by renowned French choreographer Boris Charmatz for his groundbreaking Musée de la Danse (Dancing Museum) in Rennes, France, and now being re-conceived for New York City as part of Performa 11. Musée de la Danse: Expo Zéro is an exhibition without any artwork, but with artists. It includes no objects, photographs, sculptures, or installations. Rather, it is comprised of completely empty rooms filled by the gestures, projects, bodies, stories, and dances which visitors will both see and imagine. In this way, it is truly a “museum of dance,” a radical new way of looking at the history and future of that most ephemeral of art forms, through a unique live experience that each visitor will have with an extraordinary cast of people and performers inhabiting a seemingly blank gallery space. For Musée de la Danse: Expo Zéro, Charmatz has selected ten international figures from contemporary dance, visual art, architecture, philosophy, and performance theory and criticism to be “in residence” at the project site for a three-day “think tank.” Participants include: Alex Baczynski-Jenkins (dancer/choreographer), Eleanor Bauer (dancer/choreographer), Heman Chong (visual artist/curator), Jim Fletcher (actor), Lenio Kaklea (dancer/choreographer), Jan Liesegang (architect), Valda Setterfield (dancer/actress), Marcus Steinweg (philosopher), and Fadi Toufiq (writer/artist). Following the think tank, Musée de la Danse: Expo Zéro will open to the public for three days during museum hours, at which time visitors can be led on specially guided tours by one or more of the participants. Equal parts artistic project, institutional platform, and political proposition, Musée de la Danse: Expo Zéro will undoubtedly have a lasting impact on not only the New York City dance scene, but on the larger culture as well. Co-curated by Boris Charmatz and Martina Hochmuth. Lead Curator for Performa: Lana Wilson.

Performa Institute, April 25th, 2012

One Thing Leads to Another is a working installation and multi-media performance, revolving around a overturned hot air balloon, reanimated through narrative, dance and shifting physicality. This project from artist Tamar Ettun will abstract vignettes from The Odyssey, taking the text's themes of labor, gifting and movement of the itinerant body, while incorporating dance traditions from Trisha Brown, Yvonne Rainer, and Ohad Naharin's GAGA. The performance, which will occur inside the inflated balloon, will last two hundred and forty minutes, referencing The Odyssey's 24 chapters. The audience can come and go as they like, and is encouraged to move inside and outside the balloon to witness the narrative evolve into an animate sculpture, featuring video projection, live music, and choreography from seven performers, including the artist. Performers will move from one end of the balloon to another, each making an effort to complete specific tasks while negotiating the physical impediment of others blocking their path. Once all tasks have been completed, all performers will rotate 90 degrees and repeat. Performers: Danielle Agami, Netta Yerushalmy, Luke Murphy, Yoni Kretzmer, Jaeeun Lee, Tamar Ettun. One Thing Leads to Another is organized and presented by Recess.

In his ambitious new project, which promises to be an unforgettable theatrical experience, Ming Wong has created a site-specific work for the Museum of the Moving Image in response to the building’s dynamic, fluid, and starkly white new architecture. Inspired by Ingmar Bergman’s 1966 masterpiece Persona, in which an actress and her nurse exchange identities on the remote Fårö Island, Wong’s piece is a powerful meditation on cinema and theater. It will begin with twenty-four amateur New York actors, each representing one frame of film, winding their way through the museum space. The museum itself will become a camera, pointing at, for example, a “Bergman landscape” through the glass walls of the cafe. After a series of “live action performances” in the public spaces of the museum, the show will move into the main theater, where Wong and his cast will perform a series of live sound and video experiments on a movie studio set. Developed during a residency by Wong at MoMI, Persona Performa will be a revelatory evening, a reflection on nothing less than the history of the moving image and the nature of performance itself, both on screen and in real life. Lead Curator: Defne Ayas.

Istanbul-based artist Asli Çavuşoğlu will create a walking tour on 11.11.11 that will use fortune-telling to scrutinize the ornamental façades of New York City buildings. Selected interpreters are given free reign to create the rules of fortune-telling through the use of potentially disputable sources and through the framework of their personal perspectives. Curated by Defne Ayas.

Artists Mika Rottenberg and Jon Kessler will collaborate to present SEVEN, a performance and installation that stretches from the urban landscape of New York to the savannahs of Africa. Mixing Kessler’s kinetic sculptures with Rottenberg’s absurdist videos, SEVEN will collapse film time and real time to create an intricate laboratory that channels body fluids and colors into a spectacle on the African savannah. In New York, a “Chakra Juicer” will capture sweat from seven performers engaging in ritualistic athletic activity. Cinematography: Mahyad Tousi; Technical Consultant: Steve Hamilton; Special Effects: Alex Lemke; 2D Animation: Erik Mitgartz; 3D Animation: Mickey Roth; Sound Designer: Nati Taub; Re-recording Mixer: Ronen Nagel; Camera Assistant: Richard Uren, AfriScreen Films. Performers: Empress Asia, Marshall Factora, Esteban Jefferson, Jason Liles, Chris McGinn, Cecil Parker, Sunita Sharma, Juan Valanzuela, Alex Wynne.

That Morning Thing (1967) A remounting of Robert Ashley's legendary opera That Morning Thing was performed only three times (Ann Arbor, MI, Oakland, CA and Tokyo, Japan) in the late 1960s, but the opera acquired its reputation through rumor and the famous recordings of two sections, Purposeful Lady Slow Afternoon and She Was A Visitor (on Lovely Music). In three distinct acts plus epilogue, the opera presents the socio-political climate of the times. This new staging by the writer/composer himself promises to be the definitive version of the opera. Directed by Fast Forward. Lighting by David Moodey. Sound by Tom Hamilton. With a cast of 17 performers, including John Hagan, "Blue" Gene Tyranny, Imani Uzuri, Fast Forward, Dave Ruder, Aliza Simons, Gelsey Bell, Paul Pinto, Megan Schubert, Amirtha Kidambi, Brian McCorkle, Aaron Siegel, Kimberly Young, Samantha McHale, Kimberly Bartosik, Madeline Wilcox, and Samita Sinha.

Organized by Lebanese artist Tarek Atoui, "Visiting Tarab" will incorporate elements of the world’s largest collection of Classical Arab music as interpreted by 16 musicians and sound artists ranging in expertise from hip hop to electronic and contemporary music. Atoui invited sixteen musicians and sound artists from different origins and practices to Beirut to explore the world’s largest and most extensive collection of Classical Arab music. The result of this research will be the performance in New York City and will feature the artist as well as Anti-Pop Consortium, Uriel Barthelemi, Jonathan Butcher, Mira Calix, DJ Spooky, Lukas Ligeti, Robert Lowe, Raz Mesinai, Zeena Parkins, Ikue Mori, Sara Parkins, Elliott Sharp, Zafer Tawil and Georges Ziadeh.