How Performa Turned New York Into a Stage

"Twenty years ago, the curator and art historian RoseLee Goldberg began to think about what it might mean to "frame" a work of performance art. She had moved from London in 1975 to a loft on Mercer Street, just across from Joan Jonas's studio and up the street from Donald Judd and Nam June Paik's - all artists who blended art into their surroundings."

"Among the earliest was the Noho McDonald's, where artist Christian Holstad installed a vintage jukebox that played Will Oldham, and the Slipper Room burlesque bar, where artist Francis Alÿs had a dancer tease her clothes back on. The venues took even more experimental turns as the years went on. In 2013, guests derobed at the Russian and Turkish baths to watch Rashid Johnson's steamy rendition of Amiri Baraka's play Dutchman, which the artist just revived again for the latest edition of Performa in November."

"Then, in 2015, the artist Robin Rhode chose Times Square on a Saturday night as the site for his interpretation of a slow-motion, atonal Arnold Schönberg opera. Instead of a moonlit forest, he used "the vertical architecture of New York itself" as the set, he has said. "Times Square, with its simultaneity of movement, light, and sound, resonated profoundly with Schoenberg's fractured tonality and heightened emotional register.""

RoseLee Goldberg moved from London to a Mercer Street loft in 1975, living among artists who integrated art and environment. She launched Performa in 2005 to make New York the stage for commissioned performance works. Goldberg and collaborators scouted hundreds of sites to select what she called "the perfect frame" for performances. Early examples included a Noho McDonald's jukebox by Christian Holstad and a Slipper Room piece by Francis Alÿs. Later projects staged Rashid Johnson's Dutchman in baths and Robin Rhode's Schoenberg-inspired work in Times Square, using the city's movement, light, and sound as integral elements.

Read at Curbed