This final public event in the Talks series reflects on the year's BMW Tate Live programme. It addresses some of the central thoughts and observations emerging from the inter-disciplinary debates around the nature of the performative and live art in order to identify possible future trajectories for performance in this highly mediated digital age.
How can performative actions and events challenge the existing social and cultural histories of performance and begin to write and perform new ones? In what ways can performance act as a vehicle to connect audiences and artists around the world? In the future, what relevance does performance have?
Speakers include Associate Curator at Performa Charles Aubin, Director of Witte de With Center of Contemporay Art Defne Ayas, Professor for performance theory and history at the University of Québec in Montréal, Canada, Barbara Clausen and chaired by Catherine Wood, Curator of Contemporary Art and Performance, Tate.
Biographies
Charles Aubin
Charles Aubin is Associate Curator at Performa in New York and a PhD candidate in Critical & Historical Studies at the Royal College of Art in London, where his research explores the conceptual strategies of French choreographer Jérôme Bel. Previously he worked as Assistant Curator at the Centre Pompidou’s performance department in Paris.
Defne Ayas
Defne Ayas is the Director of the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam. During her directorship, Witte de With commissioned Dai Hanzhi: 5000 Artists (with UCCA, Beijing, 2014); Moderation(s) by artist Heman Chong (with Spring Workshop, Hong Kong, 2012–2014); The Humans – a theatrical play by writer and artist Alexandre Singh – and its monthly summits Causeries (2012–2013). Ayas co-founded Arthub Asia in 2007 – an Asia-wide active research and production initiative – producing a number of projects including Double Infinity (with Van Abbemuseum 2010) and RMB City opera by Cao Fei (with Artissima, 2009). Since 2005, Ayas has also been a curator of PERFORMA, the biennial of visual art performance of New York, where she managed the biennial’s collaborative programming and organized projects and programs with an international roster of acclaimed artists, architects, curators and writers.
Barbara Clausen
Barbara Clausen is a curator and art historian living in Montreal. Since 2000 she has written extensively on performance art and performative curatorial practices and has curated numerous exhibitions and performance series in Europe as well as North America, including the series After the Act, Wieder und Wider/Again and Against and Push and Pull (2005–2011) at MUMOK in Vienna and Tate Modern, as well as Babette Mangolte a retrospective (2013 at VOX) and STAGE SET STAGE On Identity and Institutionalism (2014 at SBC) in Montreal.