Panel Discussion: Inside and Outside the Institution: Curating, Producing, Presenting
Presented by FuturePerfect and CPR - Center for Performance Research
Sunday, November 15, 1:30-3:30pm
FREE
This panel highlights the dynamic and evolving nexus between performance, media, art and technology from the overlapping perspectives of curating, producing, and presenting. Three distinguished curators/producers will show examples and discuss the practical and theoretical challenges of presenting this hybrid work—whether in a museum space, outdoor installation, concert stage, or the web. From Bill Viola’s media spectacle Tristan und Isolde at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, to choreographer Trisha Brown’s collaboration with computers in how long does the subject linger on the edge of the volume…; from Adrianne Wortzel’s A Re-enactment of The Battle of the Pyramids, a performance installation of reconfigured robotic toys; to German composers and sound artists Daniel Teige and Volkmar Klien’s work created for a 360° aural environment—no form of artistic practice has been left untouched by the dramatic advances in telecommunications and computer technologies.
Now that the critical euphoria that began in the 1990s around virtual reality and network communications is already irretrievably in the past, what comes next? How are we now defining, framing, and conceptualizing this slippery zone of artistic production, curatorial practice, and presentation? What new intellectual, creative, and artistic opportunities exist as computers and telecommunications networks mature and become increasingly inseparable from contemporary culture? How are different organizational cultures tackling these technological and artistic challenges, and with what results? Are new curatorial models emerging? What curatorial and producing opportunities exist outside of established cultural institutions?
Participants include: Christiane Paul (Whitney Museum of Art / The New School), Jon Nakagawa (Director of Contemporary Programming, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts), Micah Silver (Curator, EMPAC).
ABOUT THE PANELISTS
Jon Nakagawa is the Director of Contemporary Programming at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts where his responsibilities include New Visions, a commissioning and presenting program that brings together directors, choreographers and visual artists with the classical repertory or musician, American Songbook, a concert series devoted to the popular song and the planning and production of entertainment for Lincoln Center’s Special Events. He joined Lincoln Center as the Producer of Contemporary Programming in 1999 and has produced events ranging from The Noise of Time, a collaboration between Theatre de Complicite and the Emerson String Quartet, The Tristan Project, a collaboration between video artist Bill Viola, the Los Angeles Philharmonic conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen and Peter Sellars, and concerts with artists ranging from Audra McDonald to k.d. lang.
Micah Silver is an artist, composer, and curator working in music and its intersections with other areas of cultural production. Shows of his work have been mounted by the Jersey City Museum in a mini-retrospective called BE STILL. TAKE UP AS MUCH SPACE AS POSSIBLE. by Artspace New Haven, the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, The James Joyce Centre in Dublin Ireland, The Place in St. Petersburg, the 2008 MATA Festival in NYC, among others. His current project is a commissioned installation-opera titled The End of Safari for Mass MoCA which opening in April, 2009. As a curator and co-conspirator in the work of other artists, Silver has been Associate Curator at Diapason Gallery for Sound in New York from 2003-2006, Administrator of The Earle Brown Music Foundation from 2002-2006, Director and Conductor of the Wesleyan New Music Ensemble, and currently Curator for Music at the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center at Rensselaer. Silver is a member of The Earle Brown Music Foundation and Diapason Gallery for Sound Board of Directors.
ABOUT FUTURE PERFECT
FuturePerfect is a new initiative that researches and presents hybrid performance practices, media forms, and artistic ideas that continue to emerge as computer technologies and electronic networks mature and become inseparable from contemporary culture. In particular focus is the future of live performance and related visual culture. FuturePerfect 2011, a performance festival and exhibition, is slated for New York City during Spring 2011. Wayne Ashley is FuturePerfect's founding artistic director, the former Director of Arts in Multimedia at Brooklyn Academy of Music, BAM.
CPR's programs are supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council, as well as the Foundation for Contemporary Art.
