With a level of enthusiasm, dedication and scholarship that would be remarkable in any field, RoseLee Goldberg has remained one of the smartest and most impassioned champions of those radical, ephemeral, anti-market and institutionally-resistant gestures we have come to call performance art. As a historian she has pioneered the study of performance and preserved much of its transient past, penning the definitive text on the medium in 1979 and serving on the faculty of NYU since 1987. All the while as a critic and curator, she has consistently supported fresh, innovative work by younger artists. Goldberg also founded PERFORMA in 2004, the world's preeminent biennial for performance art based in New York City. Busy working on the forthcoming PERFORMA 09, Goldberg took a moment to tell us about some of the artists inspiring her and why performance art matters now more than ever.
"Performance art is always about the new and the young. It jump-starts new ideas that are later transformed into objects. In fact, most of the radical art ideas of the 20th century began with some kind of live, ephemeral work. So we need to pay close attention to who's working with that new material today. Some of the most compelling performance comes directly from visual artists whom you might not associate with performance but who use performance to drive their ideas. We're heading for another big wave of performance art because it allows for pure invention having nothing to do with the marketplace. A strong market, such as we have now, encourages younger artists to find ways to work outside the market.
Performance art is inherently about new media, and technology, since it's available to all, is the avant-garde of today. Adventurous artists typically think in many disciplines and are able to move in and out of any given media. PIERRE HUYGHE, based in Paris, is a great example of that. He can flow easily between anime, exquisite filmmaking and live events and use all three, or four, to create exciting installations. CORY ARCANGEL here in New York is amazing in his experimentations with antiquated computer material and pedestrian ideas about technology, and somehow brings it all together in comic performances that make reference to high and low but do not separate them.
One of the most positive aspects of young artists at the moment is that they are not embarrassed to have a broad-based audience as prior generations have. They grasp opportunities knowingly and with excitement. RYAN TRECARTIN, who is, like so many of his generation, really playful with media; he creates frenetic 'soaps' on YouTube. He's able to be smart and messy and ironic at the same time in totally entertaining ways. NATHALIE DJURBERG, a Swedish artist who lives in Berlin, makes the most sexually charged material in play-dough. Her claymation films bring a critical intelligence and tremendous humor to pop culture. Also, ROBIN RHODE from South Africa is visually seductive as hell, profound as can be, has an enormous imagination and a very good understanding of art history.
In dealing with the contemporary in all media, it is vital to be able to go back and forth between the past and the present. I look to history for clues and as a standard for how radical art can be. Just as in fashion, truly radical moments are forever radical. MIKE KELLEY is forever radical. He's constantly taking off in new directions and yet never loses his critical edge, or sometimes he falls off the edge, which is great."
[From top to bottom] Mike Kelley: "Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstruction #9 (Farm Girl)," 2004-05, copyright by Mike Kelley. Courtesy of Gagosian Gallery. Photography by Robert McKeever. Nathalie Djurberg: Stills from Untitled (Working Title "Kids & Dogs"), 2007, Courtesy of Performa, Zach Feuer Gallery, New York, and Gió Marconi, Milan. Robin Rhode: 2007 performance, Image courtesy of the artist and Perry Rubenstein Gallery, New York. Pierre Huyghe: "A forest of lines, Sydney Opera House," 2008. Courtesy of Marian Goodman Gallery, New York/Paris.
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