The Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw is pleased to invite to the symposium Performance as the paradigm of art, a public opening of the research programme dedicated to performance. André Lepecki, Gavin Butt and Joanna Warsza are the guests of the symposium. Performance as the paradigm of art is one title for two events organized in the Museum in collaboration with André Lepecki, world-famous researcher, curator and critic in the field of performance and contemporary dance: open symposium and research seminar. Both events aim to analyse the phenomenon of performance, effectively paving its way in contemporary art since the fifties – the phenomenon which today can be regarded as the paradigm of art in general. Performance here is understood in its broad sense, as the medium liberating theatre from stage, dance from music, visual arts from their physicality, including para-theatre phenomena and dance which are crucial for understanding and development of performativity in its broad sense.
Apparently, this is the place to ask the most important questions of art today: about its subject, material, language, economics of artist and audience, but also – or most of all – about its political effectiveness. Performance, considered equivalent to political action par excellence, taking place here and now, adapting and being constantly updated, over and over again, becomes the paradigm of contemporary art. This is confirmed by the example of a turn toward performance events in major museums and galleries, such as Memo in New York, Tate Modern or Serpentine Gallery in London, which not only create separate programme blocks for performance but also find a place for it in the system of purchases and conservation. The project Performance as the paradigm of art analyses this growing interest in performance from a research perspective.
The open to public symposium dedicated to current reception and development of performance features: André Lepecki (Professor at Performance Studies at New York University, author of many crucial publications, including Exhausting Dance: Performance and Politics of Movement translated into 6 languages, editor of Of the Presence of the Body, The Senses in Performance, and of the widely discussed book published by Whitechapel last year Dance, curator of many projects carried out in the USA, Europe and South America), Gavin Butt (lecturer of Goldsmiths College in London, author of Between You and Me: Queer Disclosures in the New York Art World 1948–1963, editor of After Criticism: New Responses to Art and Performance and co-founder, together with Adrian Heathfield and Lois Keidan, of a three year research programme “Performance Matters”) and Joanna Warsza (curator of the 7th Biennale in Berlin, author of texts dedicated to choreography of political movements and curator of many projects in the field of performance).
The second element of the project is a closed research seminar with André Lepecki, with participation of young Polish researchers who refer to performance in their research, artistic or curator’s work: Wojciech Ziemilski (director and critic), Joanna Zielińska (Cricoteka, Cracow), Joanna Warsza (Hdk, Berlin), Witold Mrozek (independent critic), Dorota Sajewska (specialist in culture studies, Institute of Polish Culture IKP, University of Warsaw), Anna Królica (specialist in theatre studies, Culture Institute, Jagiellonian University), Ewa Majewska (philosopher of culture, Culture Institute, Jagiellonian University, Institute of Applied Social Sciences, University of Warsaw), Michał Woliński (critic and curator), Monika Szczukowska (independent curator), Łukasz Ronduda (curator, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw), Dominik Kuryłek (curator, National Museum in Cracow), Marta Michalak (Institute of Music and Dance), Julia Hoczyk (Institute of Music and Dance), Łukasz Mojsak and Aleksandra Kędziorek (Filmoteka of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw) and the project curators: Marta Dziewańska and Magda Lipska.
The aim of the seminar is to study performance on a local level and find for this phenomenon a wider research perspective.
The symposium and seminar Performance as the paradigm of art are the continuation of the previous projects of the Museum, such as Performative Turn (2011), and will result in two blocks of performative events. In the end of March and beginning of April, the Museum is pleased to invite you to performances combing visual arts and dance; and in autumn to the programme dedicated to the recent American works, prepared by an independent curator Monika Szczukowska.
The project is carried out in cooperation with the Institute of Music and Dance and with support of British Council.
Organiser of the event:
Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw
ul. Pańska 3
00-124 Warszawa
www.artmuseum.pl
Curators of the event: Marta Dziewańska and Magda Lipska