Art Papers | 2010
Review of P.S.1/Performa’s 100 Years (version 2) by Johan Lundh.
Performance art holds a unique status in the artworld. Historically positioned between performing and visual art, has it been instrumental in setting the stage for current contemporary art practices. It is hard to envision Ryan Trecartin’s videos without Paul McCarthy’s performances, or to Andrea Fraser’s performative presentations without Joseph Beuys’ pedagogical experiments. Performance art’s disposition became an asset when art during the postmodern shift went from a discipline to a field. Accordingly, performance art has, in the last century, moved from fringe to mainstream, and the term performativity has become a crucial concept in contemporary art.
P.S.1 and Performa 09’s major exhibition 100 Years (version 2) is an impressive undertaking (P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center and Performa 09, New York City; November 1, 2009–April 5, 2010). The show is curated by Klaus Biesenbach, MoMA’s Chief Curator of Media and Performance Art and P.S.1’s Chief Curatorial Adviser, in collaboration with RoseLee Goldberg, Performa’s Director and Curator. The inaugural presentation of 100 Years took place at the Julia Stoschek Collection in Düsseldorf, Germany, in 2009. The exhibition will travel to other venues around the world. For each new edition, works will be added to or edited out, to create a context-sensitive experience.
The point of departure for the exhibition is the 100-year anniversary of Filippo Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto (1909). According to Goldberg, the Futurists lay the ground-works for performance as medium, in and of itself. In her influential book Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present (Thames & Hudson, rev. sub. edition 2001), Goldberg argues that “performance has been a way of appealing directly to a large public, as well as shocking audiences into reassessing their own notions of art and its relation to culture. Conversely, public interest in the medium, especially in the 1980s, stems from an apparent desire of that public to gain access to the art world, to be a spectator of its ritual and its distinct community, and to be surprised by the unexpected, always unorthodox presentations that the artists devise.”
The significance of the Futurist Manifesto for performance art can be debated. Nonetheless, it serves as a reasonable springboard for a discussion about the past and present of the art form.100 Years is presented as a research project which outlines of the most noteworthy movements, events and performances, of the past century. With over 200 pieces in diverse mediums, the show offers an exceptional opportunity to see works rarely presented. It features three major streams – a history of ‘performance video art,’ a selection that gives space to seminal works, and a framework for live events – that interweave with each other.
The first part of 100 Years features a history of ‘performance video art’ from 1965 to the present, organized by the not-for-profit organization Electronic Arts Intermix. It features artists’ performances created for or documented by video, from conceptual exercises of the late 1960s to new, digitally mediated performance accounts. This amazing array of pieces from Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece (1965); Dan Graham’s Performer/Audience/Mirror (1975); Pipilotti Rist’s I’m Not the Girl Who Misses Much (1986); Patty Chang’s Melons (1999); Marina Abramović’s Five Easy Pieces (2005) to Philippe Parreno’s No More Reality (2009). These works are only familiar to most of us through reproductions and writing. As overwhelming as this section may be, it is a remarkable resource for artists, scholars, students, and the general public.
The second section of 100 Years largely runs parallel to the history of performance video, featuring works that have both shaped performance as well as art in general. Works such as Allan Kaprow’s 18 Happenings in 6 Parts (1959); Yves Klein’s Anthropometrie de l’epoque bleue (1960); Yoko Ono’s Bed In (Bed Peace) (1969); Tehching Hsieh’s One Year Performance (1980/81); Tino Sehgal’s Kiss (2002); and Paul Chan’s Waiting for Godot Archive (2007) are presented in a way that is more conducive to concentrated viewing and listening. However, the rationale behind the selections is hard to glean without more information than a checklist. In addition to video projections, this section provides an abundance of reproductions of sketches, posters, and photographs, rashly stapled across the gallery walls.
The third section was inextricably linked to last Fall’s Performa 09 biennial, during which P.S.1 hosted a number of live events in conjunction with the exhibition. This part of 100 Years is eerily absent from the show as it stands. A logical solution would have been to continue to host performances throughout the duration, or at least include a record of the ones that took place. This would have added a desirable live element to a technology heavy display.
Regrettably,100 Years is disappointing due to an unclear curatorial direction and uncomfortable viewing conditions. It never becomes obvious why certain works have been accentuated and others, not. All too often the highlighted selections seem arbitrary. The history of performance video fails to unpack critical questions concerning performance art: what is the relationship between the performer and the spectator, and what is the connection between the performer and the documentation, and a retrospective audience to that documentation?
Despite the encyclopedic nature of the exhibition, I find myself longing for a sustained consideration of an artist like Tehching Hsieh, who’s practice cannot be fully understood without access to the spatial and durational aspects of his work. An inclusion such elements would have forced the curators to further consider the potential and limitations of assembling an exhibition of event-based art.