Performance art, especially in its beginnings in the 1960s and 1970s, is considered rebellious and anti-institutional. Museums, on the other hand, have a reputation for being conservative and preserving. Despite this supposed opposition, art museums today are increasingly presenting live performances and performance exhibitions. Is this a new development? When, how, and why did art come alive in museums? These questions are the starting point of the conversation, which will approach the topic from a curatorial-art historical perspective. Other key topics will include the importance of performance venues and the role that art institutions have played and continue to play in the development of performance art.
The occasion for the talk is the publication of Lisa Beißwanger's book Performance on Display – Zur Geschichte lebendiger Kunst im Museum by Deutscher Kunstverlag. The book sheds light on the hitherto little-known beginnings of the phenomenon of “performance on display.” It examines selected performances and exhibitions – from dance to body art to performance art – as well as the influence of distribution networks and art funding policies on the museumization of performance.
The conversation is a collaborative event between CCSA and the GCSC International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture.
The conversation will be held on Zoom and in German. For more information, to register, and to link to the video, visit the CCSA website.
Lisa Beißwanger is an art historian specializing in the 20th and 21st centuries. She currently researches and teaches at the Department of Architectural Theory and Science and History of Architecture and Art at the Technical University of Darmstadt. After her studies at the University of Freiburg, she worked as a curator for contemporary art. She was a member of the interdisciplinary International Graduate Center for the Study of Culture (GCSC) and received her PhD from Justus Liebig University Giessen in 2020.
Barbara Clausen is Professor in the Art History Department and Vice-Dean for Research and Development in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Quebec in Montréal, Canada. Since 2000, she has taught and written extensively on the historicization and institutionalization of performative art practices and the discourses around politics of the body and the archive. Over the past twenty years, she has curated and co-created numerous exhibitions and performance series in Europe and North America. Since 2017, she has been the curatorial director of the Joan Jonas Knowledge Base in collaboration with the Artists Archives Initiative. Currently, she is co-editing a monograph on Joan Jonas to be published by Dia Art Foundation in New York in 2022.
Jenny Schlenzka is a curator specializing in time-based art and artistic director of Performance Space New York. Previously, she was Associate Curator at New York's MoMA PS1, where she created Sunday Sessions, an interdisciplinary weekly live program, from 2012 to 2017. In 2008, she was appointed the first Curator of Performance in the Department of Media and Performance Art at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 2012, she was awarded the Yoko Ono Courage Award. She received an MA in Cultural Studies from Humboldt University in Berlin.
