RoseLee Goldberg is an art historian, critic and curator who has dedicated her career to exploring the critical

role of live performance in art What role have the abundance of new art departments, appointed specialist Given that museums are now responding to
history, and establishing new models for its interpretation and presentation. She is the author of the seminal survey Performance Art: From technologies had on the reception of curators, built dedicated spaces and the history of performance art, do you think
Futurism to the Present, which remains an influential text on the history of performance art and in 2012 was released in its third edition. In 2004 performance, given it is now easier than turned their attention to questions about re-staging early seminal performances is
Goldberg founded PERFORMA, a multi-disciplinary arts organisation devoted to the research, development and presentation of performance ever before to access at a remove? And how performance might be collected problematic? Or can it help to open up a
across disciplines. Centred on a performance biennial in New York City, Performa seeks to engage artists and audiences, generating new what flow-on effect has this had for artists and preserved. Why do you think it has dialogue about curating, conserving and
directions for performance in the 21st century. Performa will present its fifth biennial, in November this year. attempting to negotiate the tension between taken so long for this to happen? presenting performance history?
the original live performance and its Yes, it has taken a very long time because art As any educator knows, acting out is a
In February I emailed RoseLee Goldberg with questions about her perspective on performance. These are her responses. representation in film, photography, video, historians and critics rarely understood the terrific way to bring a concept to life.
or in other media? critical role of live performance by visual artists Re-staging seminal performances opens up
Bree Richards: Performance has undergone a real to lie on pillows listening to avant-garde Why do you think performance has often Indeed, an enormous effect, mostly because in shaping the history of art. Throughout the fascinating discussions about the nature of
resurgence in recent years, transitioning from the music scores. A third factor is an art been the medium of choice for artists this work can be seen around the world. The entire 20th century artists have worked across performance, its ephemerality, how artists
margins to the centre of contemporary art historical one; the 1970s, which was in many seeking to articulate difference, and for internet, YouTube, Vimeo have been critical media, in film, sound, language, dance, music use it to express particular concepts. It
discourse. Alongside a marked increase in the ways a golden age of performance and entering into wider conversations about in informing people about the extensive and architecture, influencing each other and provides an opportunity to revisit the times
number of works and venues, the medium has conceptual art is now history. The story of global culture? history of performance, so at last there is pushing and pulling ideas in all kinds of exciting when the piece was originally made.
been embraced by new audiences around the this work must now be told in every Because performance is without rules, knowledge being built around a broad range directions. I will acknowledge that it is a lot Curating, whether of performance,
world. What are the driving factors behind this contemporary art museum. without an academy, without gatekeepers. of material which leads to comparisons and of work to stay current with so many distinct painting, or sculpture, demands extensive
embrace? In the 1970s it was a platform for feminist criticism and a sense of excitement that disciplines and their histories and to knowledge on the part of the curator, and
RoseLee Goldberg: Many factors come into Youve described how for the Futurists in politics, in the 80s, for multiculturalism, comes with that knowledge. As with any art, understand where the connections and real talent and sensitivity as well, to make
play perhaps the main one being the 1909 the train, car, plane and machine were gender identity and AIDS activism, and each representation of the form flows the deep influences occur. Back to your first sense of the past and to present work to the
excitement of a greatly expanded art the basis for an evolving aesthetic. Is there in the 90s it provided a vehicle for a new through many different media; the Mona question about why the increasing interest public in a way that is gripping and
audience to engage directly with artists. an equivalent for performance artists in 2013, generation of artists from China, South Lisa is known through images, post-cards, in performance now: the nature of the illuminating.
Another is the fact that the museum of the or is the field just too broad? Africa, Cuba, to become known globally in publications, films, Instagram. Many people contemporary museum as a place of action,
21st century is entirely different from the art The Futurists responded to the thrill of speed the international art world. Performance probably know the work through other the 70s now being history and so on. Its And finally, what is it about performance
museum of just a decade or two ago. Then, represented by the train, the car, the plane. These engages people even if paradoxically it means than the numbers who actually see why I started Performa, because I felt that continues to excite you?
they were quiet places of contemplation, of high-powered machines distributed people and might initially seem incomprehensible the real thing. It is interesting to note that it was taking too long to get this message It incorporates all disciplines; it reflects
study; we spoke in whispers and tiptoed information around the globe at speeds because it is a direct experience. People Performa had more than 4,000,000 hits on across, and I was determined to show the contemporary politics, economics, global
through the haloed halls of legitimised art unimaginable in the 19th century. The equivalent can 'read' other people, and they feel free our website during three weeks of Performa importance of performance as central to developments. It is always in progress,
history. The museum today is a cultural for us today is the computer, the Internet, and to respond and to make their opinions 11. Performance is all about media, so it is the history of art, not a side-show, in the shifting and changing. It is many-layered,
pleasure palace where large audiences can the ever more advanced technologies that are known. It provokes conversation and a the perfect form and content for 21st most public way and to insist that it was time involving ideas as much as the physical
gather, and where they are as likely to spinning us faster and faster into the future. community of viewers. This is much century technologies that museums did just that start their own body, space and place as much as context
experience a slide down a two-storey shoot This is the powerful aesthetic of our times. It is more difficult if youre standing in front performance art departments to catch up and aesthetics.
that also doubles as a sculpture, to eat a meal very similar to the massive shift that occurred of an abstract painting. In recent years a number of major with a medium that will be used more and
in a specially constructed artists kitchen, or at the beginning of the last century museums have established performance more by up and coming generations of artists.

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