Alison Knowles
Trisha Brown Dance Company
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker
Ralph Lemon
Xavier Le Roy
Kathy Halbreich
Christophe Cherix
The Museum continues its Performance Exhibition Series with a range of performances. The Identical Lunch, is a performance by Alison Knowles held in conjunction with the exhibition Contemporary Art from the Collection. A program of live performance and dance, featuring the work of such notable figures as Trisha Brown and Ralph Lemon, will take place in MoMA's Marron Atrium in conjunction with the exhibition On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century.
The Museum of Modern Art continues its Performance
Exhibition Series with a range of performances taking place during January and February 2011.
The Identical Lunch, a performance by Alison Knowles held in conjunction with the exhibition
Contemporary Art from the Collection, will take place twice a week between January 13 and
February 4 in MoMA’s Cafe 2. A program of live performance and dance, featuring the work of
such notable figures as Trisha Brown and Ralph Lemon, will take place in MoMA’s Marron Atrium in
conjunction with the exhibition On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century. Staging Action:
Performance in Photography since 1960, an exhibition of photographs of performative actions
drawn from MoMA’s collection, opens on January 28 and brings together performances from the
last 50 years that were specifically created for the camera. Continuing through January 10, Allora
& Calzadilla’s Stop, Repair, Prepare: Variations on “Ode to Joy” for a Prepared Piano will be
performed daily in MoMA’s Marron Atrium. Complete information on each of the exhibitions is
below.
PERFORMANCE EXHIBITION SERIES
Performance 10: Alison Knowles
January 13, 14, 20, 21, 27, and 28, and February 3 and 4
Cafe 2, second floor
In conjunction with the exhibition Contemporary Art from the Collection, Alison Knowles is inviting
Museum visitors to have an “identical lunch” with her, as a performance piece, on select dates in
January and February in MoMA’s Cafe 2. Knowles conceived of The Identical Lunch in the late
1960s, when her friend and fellow Fluxus artist Philip Corner noticed that she ate the same lunch
every day: “a tuna fish sandwich on wheat toast with butter and lettuce, no mayo, and a cup of
soup or glass of buttermilk.” Turning this habit into a performance, she asked friends to try the
same lunch, often at a local diner, and to write about their experiences. The project has evolved
to include communal meals served by Knowles along with artist’s books gathering photographs
and participants’ descriptions of the events. For the MoMA performance, participants must sign up
for the event on MoMA’s website, MoMA.org. Registration begins January 3 at 9:30 a.m. Space is
limited; lunch will be free with Museum admission. The exhibition is organized by Kathy Halbreich,
Associate Director, and Christophe Cherix, The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Chief Curator of Prints and
Illustrated Books, The Museum of Modern Art.
PERFORMANCES 11–15: On Line
January–February 2011
The Donald B. and Catherine C. Marron Atrium
The dancing body has long been a subject matter for drawing, as seen in a variety of works
included in the exhibition On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century, currently on view on
the Museum’s sixth floor. These documentations show dance in two dimensions, allowing it to be
seen in a gallery setting. But if one considers line as the trace of a point in motion—an idea at the
core of this project—the act of dance itself becomes a drawing, an insertion of drawing into the
time and three-dimensional space of our lived world. In conjunction with the exhibition, and as
part of MoMA’s ongoing Performance Exhibition Series, these programs of live performance and
dance are organized by the exhibition’s curators, Connie Butler and Catherine de Zegher, with
Jenny Schlenzka, Assistant Curator for Performance, Department of Media and Performance Art,
The Museum of Modern Art.
All performances take place in the Donald B. and Catherine C. Marron Atrium, and are included
with admission to the Museum. MoMA will be posting updates and information on the Performance
Performance 11: On Line/Trisha Brown Dance Company
Sticks (1973); Scallops (1973); Locus Solo (1975); and Roof Piece Re-Layed (2011)
(based on Roof Piece [1971])
Performed on January 12, 15, and 16, at 2:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m.
Choreographer Trisha Brown (American, b. 1936) experiments with space, gravity, and the
orientation of the body. She was an essential contributor to the development of postmodern
dance, an innovation associated with New York’s Judson Dance Theater in 1962–64. At MoMA the
Trisha Brown Dance Company, which celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2010, will perform the
early works Sticks (1973), Scallops (1973), and Locus Solo (1975), and the premiere of Roof
Piece Re-Layed (2011), which is based on Roof Piece (1971). Approximate program length:
60 minutes.
Performance 12: On Line/Marie Cool and Fabio Balducci
Selected untitled works (2004–09)
Performed on January 17, 19, and 20, throughout the day
The work of Marie Cool (French, b. 1961) and Fabio Balducci (Italian, b. 1964) is rooted less
in the tradition of performance art than in sculpture, painting, and drawing. Their actions are
composed from an inventory of simple, reductive gestures initiated by the physical properties of
ordinary materials, such as string, paper, or a piece of Scotch tape. Their work will be on view
continuously throughout their three-day appearance at MoMA.
Performance 13: On Line/Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker
Violin Phase from Fase: Four Movements to the Music of Steve Reich (1982)
Performed on January 22 and 23, 2:00 and 4:00 p.m.
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker (Belgian, b. 1960) is one of the most prominent choreographers in
contemporary dance. Throughout her career she has focused on the relationship between music
and dance and also repeatedly ventured into the realms of text and visual art. The minimalist
music of composer Steve Reich (American, b. 1936) inspired De Keersmaeker’s seminal work
Fase: Four Movements to the Music of Steve Reich (1982). She will perform “Violin Phase" (an
excerpt from Fase), dancing on sand, her movements creating a large circular drawing on the
Marron Atrium floor. Approximate program length: 16 minutes.
Performance 14: On Line/Ralph Lemon
Untitled (2008), with Okwui Okpokwasili
Performed on January 26, 29, and 30, at 3:00 p.m.
New York–based artist Ralph Lemon (American, b. 1952) works across the disciplines of dance,
film, and visual arts. In Untitled (2008), which Lemon created for himself and longtime
collaborator Okwui Okpokwasili (American, b. 1972), he explores the body’s ability to push beyond
technique and training, exhaustion and exhilaration, to movements unfettered by control,
rationality, and reflex. The result is a quiet and harrowing duet that investigates connection and
division between two bodies. Approximate length: 40 minutes
Performance 15: On Line/Xavier Le Roy
Self Unfinished (1998), a collaboration with Laurent Golding, to recorded music by
Diana Ross.
Performed on February 2, 5, and 6, 5:30 p.m.
Over the last decade, choreographer Xavier Le Roy (French, b. 1963) has opened up new
perspectives in the world of dance. Trained as a molecular biologist, he approaches his work
scientifically, starting with a single idea or question. He will present his groundbreaking work Self
Unfinished (1998), conceived in collaboration with Laurent Golding, which is concerned with the
representation of the body; in it he morphs through bodily configurations, deviating as far as
possible from an identifiable human figure. Approximate length: 55 minutes.
Seating for the performance is limited. Reservations are required. See MoMA.org/performance15
for details. The performance contains nudity.
ONGOING
Performance 9: Allora & Calzadilla
December 8, 2010–January 10, 2011, hourly beginning at 11:30 a.m. each day
Donald B. and Catherine C. Marron Atrium, second floor
For Performance 9: Allora & Calzadilla, MoMA brings Stop, Repair, Prepare: Variations on “Ode to
Joy” for a Prepared Piano (2008) to the Marron Atrium for performances throughout the day. The
piece, which was acquired by MoMA in 2009 and is being publicly performed in the Museum for the
first time, was created by the artist duo Jennifer Allora (b. 1974) and Guillermo Calzadilla (b.
1971), who have been named the United States representatives for the 2011 Venice Biennale.
Blending sculpture and performance, the artists have carved a hole in the center of an early
twentieth-century Bechstein piano, creating a void in which the performer stands to play the
Fourth Movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, usually referred to as “Ode to Joy.” For each
30-minute performance, the pianist leans over the piano’s keyboard, playing upside down and
backwards, while moving the instrument around the Atrium. The work will be performed by the
following pianists: Terezija Cukrov, Mia Elezovic, Amir Khosrowpour, Evan Shinners, and Sun Jun.
Performance 9: Allora & Calzadilla is organized by Klaus Biesenbach, Director, MoMA PS1, and
Chief Curator at Large, MoMA, with Jenny Schlenzka, Assistant Curator for Performance,
Department of Media and Performance Art, MoMA.
RELATED EXHIBITION:
Staging Action: Performance in Photography since 1960
January 28–May 9, 2011
The Robert and Joyce Menschel Gallery, third floor
The relationship between photography and performance has become distinctly more complicated
since the 1960s, when artists increasingly began making art that was transient and
improvisational. For the most part, performances are intended to be experienced live, in real time,
with photography playing an ancillary function in recording them. This exhibition, however,
considers performances made expressly for the camera, resulting in photographs that function as
independent, expressive pictures. Drawn from the Museum’s collection, the works included in
Staging Action document and depict performances, oftentimes executed in the absence of a public
audience. At the center of these pictures is a performer (the artist, or his or her proxy) posing or
enacting actions conceived of in front of the photographic lens. Many artists experimented with
the camera to test the physical and psychological limits of the body. Others enlisted it as
accomplice to acts of political dissent. The exhibition presents the work of pioneering figures such
as Bas Jan Ader, Günter Brus, VALIE EXPORT, George Maciunas, Ana Mendieta, Bruce Nauman,
and Mieko Shiomi, as well as that of subsequent generations of artists, including Ai Weiwei,
Matthew Barney, Laurel Nakadate, Lorna Simpson, and Robin Rhode. Staging Action attests to the
myriad ways in which photography, with its ability to both freeze and extend a moment in time,
goes beyond mere documentation to constitute performance as a conceptual exercise. The
exhibition is organized by Roxana Marcoci, Curator, and Eva Respini, Associate Curator,
Department of Photography, The Museum of Modern Art.
The Performance Exhibition Series is made possible by MoMA’s Wallis Annenberg Fund for
Innovation in Contemporary Art through the Annenberg Foundation.
On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century and the accompanying performance series are
made possible by MoMA’s Wallis Annenberg Fund for Innovation in Contemporary Art through the
Annenberg Foundation, The International Council of The Museum of Modern Art, Maja Oeri and
Hans Bodenmann, The Contemporary Arts Council of The Museum of Modern Art, and the Robert
Lehman Foundation.
Press Contact:
Paul Jackson, 212-708-9593 or paul_jackson@moma.org
Margaret Doyle, 212-408-6400 or margaret_doyle@moma.org
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