Biennial Hub

Commissioned since Performa 09, the Hub, this year designed by Berlin’s Studio Miessen, is the nerve center and heart of the biennial’s and the Performa Institute’s presence. Spontaneously intersect with staff, books, screenings, events, and artist-in-residence Kenyan literary network Kwani Trust.

Introduction to crystal healing, a healing modality that works directly with the light, color, beauty, and perfect geometric forms that the mineral kingdom provides to assist us in balancing all aspects of our being. 

Adult Contemporary is a mobile reading and performance series founded in 2013 by Svetlana Kitto and Katie Brewer-Ball. 

Artists, archivists, scholars, digital technology experts, and curators contribute strategies for archiving the past decade of performance art in its ascending cultural prominence in this day-long symposium, culminating in an interactive panel regarding how best to archive specific case studies from the Performa Archive.

Welcome to the Performa Archive! We'll follow up Saturday's Forever and A Day: Archiving Performa Symposium, by kicking off our Performa Archive selects, an exciting film program highlighting past Performa Commissions, including Iona Rozeal Brown and Russell Maliphant

Wa Lehulere discusses his Performa Commission, the sculptural sound work, I cut my skin to liberate the splinter, with Evan Moffitt, Assistant Editor of Frieze magazine.  

Artist Jimmy Robert reflects on his Performa Commission at Philip Johnson’s Glass House, Imitation of Lives, with architect and Associate Professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Mario Gooden. 

Estonian Pavilon artist Flo Kaserau discusses her work,  Ainult liikmetele (Members Only), with Laurel Ptak, executive director and curator at Art in General. 

As part of the Estonian Pavilion Without Walls, this hour-long short film program spans over two decades of works showing the presence of performance in Estonian contemporary art, as seen through the camera. 

The lecture and screening on Estonian performance takes place within the Estonian Pavilion without Walls, providing context for Performa commissions and projects through a survey of the key moments in the history of performance art in the country from late 1960s until today.

Our weekly Curators' Coffee sessions offers the art community a lively, informal opportunity to connect with Performa 17 curators, writers, artists, and international guests to discuss this year's exciting Biennial programming. 

The Performa Institute is pleased to present international artist Tracey Emin, CBE, RA, in a live painting/interview with Vincent Fremont.  As the interview unfolds, Emin will be taking questions from the audience, so come prepared for this not to be missed event.  

Performa 17 artist Yto Barrada and Brooklyn-based educator Lisa Nett lead a tree identification walk through Prospect Park. 

Artist Brian Belott does a song and dance with curator Jens Hoffman, as a finale to close out his DADA-inspired Performa 17 Commission, People Pie Pool. 

Kelly Nipper discusses her Performa Commission Terre Mécanique with Associate Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art and Media at Columbia University, Noam M. Elcott.

Bryony Roberts and Mabel O. Wilson reflect on Marching On, their performance commissioned by Storefront and made in collaboration with the Marching Cobras of New York presented at Marcus Garvey Park on November 11 and 12.​

The Performa 17 biennial artist and curator discuss the interrelation of abstraction and performance in Mutu's work over the past two years. 

Anu Vahtra’s project Open House Closing. A Walk activates vacant storefronts and spaces in SoHo, each displaying a different “scene" in an overall narrative. Vahtra is renowned for her artistic approach to site-specific space-oriented subjects and for the diligent methods of articulating them. 

Teju Cole’s DJ lecture is an exploration of the way music, over the past 25 years, played an essential role in his personal notion of African-ness

Heavy Discussion with panelists Alexis Sablone, Kea Duarte, Jaime Reyes, Sara Kay, Lacey Baker, and Elissa Steamer - some of the most well-known professional female skateboarders in the world.

Queer nightlife has always been subversive by nature. By merely existing, spaces in celebration of Queer and Trans People of Color are a form of resistance and remain central to community strengthening. QTPOC art collective Papi Juice, New York-based platform RAGGA, and dancer-performer NIC Kay come together for a discussion on nightlife as art form and its critical role as a tool for activism. Moderated by Alexin Tenefrancia and Rosemary Reyes.
 

Performa's RoseLee Goldberg and artist Nicholas Hlobo in conversation on the occasion of Hlobo's performance umBhovuzo: The Parable of the Sower. 

Yvonne Rainer's Revision: A Truncated History of the Universe for Dummies. A Rant Dance