Artists Space

Performing Institution

Talks
May 26, 2012, 7pm

In the light of the address of performance and the durational in the Whitney Biennial, Professor of Arts and Humanities at UC Berkeley Shannon Jackson, editor of artforum.com David Velasco, and choreographer Sarah Michelson present perspectives on the relationship between performative practices and the art institution.

A girl lays on a dark background. She wears a white leotard. Her arms are stretched straight out on either side, with her palms facing upwards. She gazes upwards, illuminated by a soft light.
Sarah Michelson. Devotion, 2011. Photo: Paula Court. [A girl lays on a dark background. She wears a white leotard. Her arms are stretched straight out on either side, with her palms facing upwards. She gazes upwards, illuminated by a soft light.]

Performing Institution will encompass presentations and conversations on both the nature of performance as constituted by socio-political relations, and the potentially more formalized experience of theater and dance within a museum’s galleries.

Shannon Jackson is Distinguished Professor in the Arts and Humanities at University of California, Berkeley, and Director of the Arts Research Center. Her recent publications include Social Works: Performing Art, Supporting Publics (Routledge, 2011) and Professing Performance (Cambridge University Press, 2004)


David Velasco is editor of artforum.com and a regular contributor to Artforum. His contribution to the May issue of the magazine was a review of the performance program in the current Whitney Biennial.


Sarah Michelson is a choreographer whose work Devotion Study #1 — The American Dancer featured on the fourth floor of Whitney Biennial 2012 in early March. Her work has previously been presented at The Kitchen, New York, and The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis amongst other venues.