Kader Attia
Andrea Fraser
Ion Grigorescu
Sharon Hayes
Dorit Margreiter
Deimantas Narkevicius
Martha Rosler
Sabine Breitwieser
Martin Hartung
Bringing together nine works which have recently entered the Museum's collection of Media and Performance Art, the exhibition reflects the variety of the artists' practices, perspectives and backgrounds. It raises questions about how the past is constructed and how it can inform the present and the future. The practices exemplified in the works on view, which include revisiting existing narratives and examining one's own cultural, social and personal history, are not bound to a specific medium.
The Museum of Modern Art presents Performing Histories
(1), the first of a two-part exhibition of media artworks that engage with history in various ways,
from September 12, 2012, to March 11, 2013, in the Yoshiko and Akio Morita Gallery. Bringing
together nine works which have recently entered the Museum’s collection of Media and
Performance Art, the exhibition reflects the variety of the artists’ practices, perspectives, and
backgrounds, and raises questions about how the past is constructed and how it can inform the
present and the future. Featured in the exhibition are works by Kader Attia (French, b. 1970),
Andrea Fraser (American, b. 1965), Ion Grigorescu (Romanian, b. 1945), Sharon Hayes
(American, b. 1970), Dorit Margreiter (Austrian, b. 1967), Deimantas Narkevičius (Lithuanian, b.
1964), and Martha Rosler (American, b. 1943). Performing Histories (1) is organized by Sabine
Breitwieser, Chief Curator, with Martin Hartung, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Media and
Performance Art.
The practices exemplified in the works on view, which include revisiting existing narratives
and examining one’s own cultural, social, and personal history, are not bound to a specific
medium. They are part of a critical artistic practice in which artists have a general interest in
revealing unknown aspects or even constructing new perspectives on history. In recent decades,
artists have increasingly employed a performative approach in dialogue with cinematic and
photographic mediums, such as film, slide projection, video, and photography to provide new
readings of history and open it to a multitude of narratives.
Among the works on view is Kader Attia’s Open Your Eyes (2010), a double slide
projection based on extensive research undertaken by the artist on the notion of modern Western
aesthetics. Attia addresses the subject through the issue of repair to the human body, which he
compares to the evolution of repair in the non-Occidental world via photographs of objects and
documents at the storage facilities of museums like the Smithsonian National Museum of African
Art in Washington D.C., and various military museums in Europe. This work was the initial project
for Attia’s large-scale installation The Repair (2012) on view at dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel,
Germany. Deimantas Narkevičius’ film Once in the XX Century (2004) and Dorit Margreiter’s film
installation zentrum (2004-11) explore the role of film as both document and medium involved in
history in controversial ways. In Once in the XX Century, Narkevičius manipulates existing
television footage that documents the action of the Lithuanian people taking down a sculpture of
Lenin in 1991, so that it looks as if the crowd is preparing and then celebrating the erection of the
sculpture. The artist’s historical reversal ironically points to other scenes in history with regard to
the longing for or denial of political and economic systems. Margreiter’s zentrum is a filmic
reconstruction and performance featuring a broken neon sign in Leipzig in the former German
Democratic Republic. The work reflects on modernity’s relationship with the moving image,
design, and politics, situating the aesthetics of socialist modernism in the 21st-century.
Romanian artist Ion Grigorescu employed film to create intimate experimentations staged
secretly in his home using his own body within the context of an imploding nation. Andrea Fraser’s
split-screen video installation Soldadera (Scenes from Un Banquete en Tetlapayac, a film by
Olivier Debroise) (1998/2001), in which the artist performs a double role, represents a splitting
within the structure of the artistic field that becomes a framework for examining the fate of
certain radical utopian and revolutionary impulses in 20th-century art. In Sharon Hayes’
installation The Interpreter Project (2001), the artist “re-interprets” actual tours through the
historic houses of four prominent American women pointing to the specificity and particularity of
the construction of a “feminized” historical narrative.
Another noted work is Martha Rosler’s She Sees in Herself a New Woman Every Day
(1976), which is composed of 12 color photographs of a woman’s shoes and legs arranged in a
grid on the floor, accompanied by an audiotape of a woman having an imaginary talk with her
mother. Rosler uses the combination of her narration and the images of her own body to critically
examine perceptions of female identity, in a way that is at once personal and universal.
Exploring social and political conditions and reconsidering their own personal pasts, the
participating artists in Performing Histories (1) have deconstructed, reassembled, and re-
performed histories, focusing on the ambiguity of history and the impact of ideologies on
individual and collective consciousness.
Performing Histories (2) will present works by Wael Shawky (Egypt, b. 1971) and Chen
Shaoxiong (China, b. 1962), and the exhibition will take place in the Media Gallery from April to
October 2013.
Along with the exhibition, a series of live performances under the title Performing Histories
will be held in the Museum galleries. A special section in the MoMA Media Lounge will also be
dedicated to videos related to the exhibition.
SPONSORSHIP:
Performing Histories (1) is made possible by MoMA’s Wallis Annenberg Fund for Innovation in
Contemporary Art through the Annenberg Foundation.
PERFORMANCE PROGRAM:
In addition to the exhibition, a number of live performances will be held in the Museum also under
the title Performing Histories. A three-part performance series, Performing Histories will be held in
conjunction with three exhibitions at MoMA: Performing Histories (1), Tokyo 1950–1970: A New
Avant-Garde (November 18, 2012–February 25, 2013), and Inventing Abstraction, 1910–1925
(December 23, 2012–April 15, 2013).
The series begins on September 12, 2012, in The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 2, with Los
Angeles-based artist Andrea Fraser’s Men on the Line: Men Committed to Feminism, KPFK,
1972 (2012), a performance based on a radio broadcast from 1972 in which four men discussed a
variety of issues related to feminism. Fraser transcribed and edited the broadcast and performs as
all four participants, re-enacting in her own performance their struggle to experience empathy
across the boundaries of gender identity. By voicing and embodying these multiple male
perspectives, the performance engages long-standing debates about gender and women's
liberation, and in doing so, it recalls some of the key concerns of feminist movements, past and
present. Among these concerns are issues of essentialism, separatism, and the relationship
between feminist struggles and other forms of domination, along with questions surrounding the
construction, internalization, and reproduction of social norms and identities.
Men on the Line was originally produced by West of Rome, curated by Emi Fontana for the
Pacific Standard Time Performance and Public Art Festival, and organized by the Getty Research
Institute and LA>
PUBLIC PROGRAMS:
Modern Mondays
Modern Mondays, an ongoing program that brings contemporary, innovative film and moving-
image works to the public, provides a forum for viewers to engage in dialogue and debate with
contemporary filmmakers and artists.
Monday, October 15, 2012. An Evening with Kader Attia. Titus Theater 2, 7:00 p.m.
Organized by Sabine Breitwieser, Chief Curator, Department of Media and Performance Art
Monday, October 22, 2012. An Evening with Dorit Margreiter. Titus Theater 2, 7:00 p.m.
Organized by Sabine Breitwieser, Chief Curator, Department of Media and Performance Art
Monday, November 26, 2012. An Evening with Martha Rosler. Titus Theater 2, 7:00 p.m.
Organized by Sabine Breitwieser, Chief Curator, Department of Media and Performance Art
Monday, March 4, 2013. An Evening with Deimantas Narkevičius. Titus Theater 2, 7:00 p.m.
Organized by Ana Janevski, Associate Curator, Department of Media and Performance Art
Tickets: Admission is free for Museum members and for Museum ticketholders. $12 adults; $10
seniors, 65 years and over with I.D.; $8 full-time students with current I.D.
Organized by the Department of Film and the Department of Media and Performance Art. Modern
Mondays is made possible by Anna Marie and Robert F. Shapiro. Additional support is provided by
The Contemporary Arts Council of The Museum of Modern Art.
CONTACT:
Paul Jackson 212-708-9593
Department of Communications
212-708-9431
pressoffice@moma.org
Image: Andrea Fraser. Soldadera (Scenes from Un banquete en Tetlapayac, a film by Olivier Debroise). 1998/2001. Two-channel video installation (color, sound), 5-page facsimile letter from Frances Flynn Paine to Mrs. Abby Aldrich Rockefeller. Committee on Media and Performance Art Funds. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Installation view, Modernologies, MACBA, 2009. © Photographer: Tony Coll. Courtesy of Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA)
The Yoshiko and Akio Morita Gallery, second floor
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Hours: Wednesday through Monday, 10:30 a.m.–5:30 p.m. Friday, 10:30 a.m.–8:00 p.m. Closed Tuesday
SUMMER HOURS June 26—SEPTEMBER 25: Listed above.
Museum Admission: $25 adults; $18 seniors, 65 years and over with I.D.; $14 full-time students with
current I.D. Free, members and children 16 and under. (Includes admittance to Museum galleries and film
programs). Target Free Friday Nights 4:00–8:00 p.m.
Film Admission: $12 adults; $8 seniors, 65 years and over with I.D. $10 full-time students with current
I.D. (For admittance to film programs only)