PERFORMA: NEW VISUAL ART PERFORMANCE

A catalog and historical record of the world’s first performance biennial, which took place in New York City in November 2005, Performa: New Visual Art Performance is also an artists’ journal and reference tool authored by Performa founder RoseLee Goldberg, who pioneered the study of performance art with her seminal book Performance Art from Futurism to the Present (1979). Performa: New Visual Art Performance presents an authoritative introduction to the genre, many forms including radio broadcast, dance, live installation, new technologies, film and video, music, historic reconstructions and lecture-as-performance, and provides a vivid tour through the world of contemporary performance, featuring inventive documentation of works by some of the most significant artists of our time, including Jesper Just, Francis Alys, Christian Marclay, Laurie Simmons, Tamy Ben-Tor, Melik Ohanian, Michael Smith, Christian Holstad, and Gelitin. Vibrant photographs of each artist’s performance by renowned performance photographer Paula Court are accompanied by their scripts, sketches and storyboards, providing unique insight into their creative processes. Lively interviews with many of the artists who made the first biennial so extraordinary appear alongside context-setting essays by some of New York’s most accomplished young curators. An invaluable reference tool, a new kind of guide to cultural life, and a time capsule of this very moment in New York’s eminent history of performance, Performa: New Visual Art Performance captures the state of performance today in all of its beauty, complexity, and excitement. Distributed by Distributed Art Publishers Inc.

By RoseLee Goldberg
Forward by Hal Foster
Photographs by Paula Court, Edited by Jennifer Liese