CONFERENCE
Stage, Record, Archive: Performance
DAY II
Online
February 23, 2022 13.30 – 20.15
13.30 - 15.30 Workshop: Gunter Lösel and Ninja Hoffman “Research Video”
Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK), Switzerland
In 2017, ZHdK launched a project to explore solutions for the publication of results of artistic research in the fields of dance and theater. The Research Video, proposing annotated videos as an alternative form of publication, included two stages. First, a software tool optimized for this particular purpose was developed. The research was then further shaped by reflecting on the questions of how to meet both academic and artistic needs.
Led by Lösel and Hoffman, the workshop will commence with a short presentation of selected cases of application. During the workshop, participants will annotate a video and learn the process of publishing it.
The workshop will be held in English and is limited to 15 participants. To register, name, last name and contact information should be sent to public.programs@saltonline.org.
Gunter Lösel is a researcher and actor, he holds a PhD in Theater Studies and a BA in Psychology. He is head of the program Research Focus in Performative Practice at the Zurich University of the Arts (Switzerland) and has been publishing on themes such as embodied cognition, improvisation, collaborative creativity and artistic research since 2004. He was the chief coordinator of the project Research Video (SNF-funded 2017-2021) and is the co-coordinator of the project The Answering Machine (funded by VW Foundation 2022-2026).
Ninja Hoffmann, is a project manager at ZHdK and co-founder of Butterfly. She leads the Digital Assistance program, which was established to support digital teaching.
SESSION I
16.00 - 16.35 Rebecca Schneider: “Not, Yet: When Our Art is in Our Hands”
Brown University, USA
“How can one conserve performance-based art?” “What would it mean to think of performance as itself a mode of conservation?” By drawing on recent conversations she has had with conservation theorist Hanna B. Hölling, Schneider will examine what performance might teach us about endurance, duration, fungibility and the “not, yet.”
Rebecca Schneider is a Professor of Modern Media and Culture at Brown University (USA). She is the author of The Explicit Body in Performance (1997), Performing Remains: Art and War in Times of Theatrical Reenactment (2011), Theatre and History (2014), and the long form essay “Slough Media” in Remain (2019). Her work has been supported by the Guggenheim Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. She is currently working on a digital book on gesture titled Standing Still Moving: The Arts of Gesture in Lateral Time, and the project Shoaling in the Sea of History taking up media, performance, history, and the oceanic for which she was named a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow.
16.35 - 16.45 Q&A
16.50 - 17.25 Heike Roms: “When Yoko Ono Did Not Come to Wales: Locating the Early History of Performance Art”
University of Exeter, UK
Roms will introduce What’s Welsh for Performance?, a long-term research project through which she is investigating strategies for the historicization and archiving of early performance art, especially work created in the supposedly marginal cultural context of Wales between 1965 and 1979. The research utilizes performative forms of staging, recording, and archiving this history, including oral history formats, re-enactments, installations, exhibitions and guided tours. She will discuss what such approaches reveal about Wales’s performance past, and ask whether performance art’s history can indeed be thought of as belonging to a place and time.
Heike Roms is a Professor in Theater and Performance at the University of Exeter (UK). Her research into the history and historiography of early performance art was supported by a large grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (2009-2011), and won the UK’s David Bradby TaPRA Award for Outstanding Research in 2011. She has published on performance art history and historiography, archiving and documentation, and performance art education. She is currently working on a book with the working title When Yoko Ono Did Not Come to Wales: Locating the Early History of Performance Art.
17.25 - 17.35 Q&A
17.35 - 17.50 Coffee Break
SESSION II
17:50 - 18.25 Robert Jarosz: “The Foundation and Practices of the Polish Performance Archive”
Muzeum Sztuki Nowoczesnej w Warszawie, Poland
Jarosz will focus on the Polish Performance Archive founded in 2015 and will present a short overview of subjects of presence / absence and pain in the history of Polish Performance. He will discuss particular performances by Adam Rzepecki, Józef Robakowski, Henryk Gajewski, Zbigniew Warpechowski, Anna Ciba, Zbyszko Trzeciakowski and Justyna Górowska.
Robert Jarosz is a curator, music producer, publisher, and the Head of Artists’ Archives at Muzeum Sztuki Nowoczesnej w Warszawie. He led many curatorial and editorial projects on Polish contemporary art and music.
18.25 - 18.35 Q&A
18.40 - 19.15 Esa Vincenty Nickle
Performa, USA
Performa is a performance art biennial that has been held in various venues and institutions in New York since 2005. Nickle will elaborate on Performa’s current project to provide access to the Performa archives and the organization’s commitment to building the archives through the process of commissioning and producing new works as well as the research and exploration of art history. She will also discuss the intersection of archives and content distribution and syndication in the 21st Century.
Esa Vincenty Nickle is the managing director and executive producer of Performa. She joined the Performa team in 2005 to help launch the first Performa biennial (Performa 05) as biennial coordinator. She was pivotal to the international Pavilions Without Walls program. She oversees all Performa commissions, international partnerships, and special events. Nickle has been the main manager of the Performa archives and was instrumental in developing the archives prototype.
19.15 - 19.25 Q&A
19.30 - 20.05 Rebecca Gordon: “Coda: On ‘re-elaborating’ Performance Art”
University College London, UK
Gordon will conclude the two-day conference with a coda*, as in reference to its use in classical music. This presentation, therefore, strives to draft “re-elaborations” of the thematic material expertly emphasized by the distinguished speakers and in turn, considers the device of “re-elaboration” as a structural and thematic premise by which to usher performance art into the future.
*Coda, meaning tail in Italian, is a musical term (and its symbol) that denotes the concluding section of a composition.
Rebecca A. Gordon is a researcher and writer in modern and contemporary art, specializing in the history and theory of contemporary art conservation. She is an associate lecturer in the History of Art Department at University College London (UK) and has taught at University of Glasgow (UK), New York University (USA), and University of Amsterdam (Netherlands). Her research has addressed issues of authenticity and material significance, artist’s intention, performing documentation, and the notion of an artwork’s ‘critical mass’.
20.05 - 20.15 Q&A and Closing remarks
Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK), Switzerland
In 2017, ZHdK launched a project to explore solutions for the publication of results of artistic research in the fields of dance and theater. The Research Video, proposing annotated videos as an alternative form of publication, included two stages. First, a software tool optimized for this particular purpose was developed. The research was then further shaped by reflecting on the questions of how to meet both academic and artistic needs.
Led by Lösel and Hoffman, the workshop will commence with a short presentation of selected cases of application. During the workshop, participants will annotate a video and learn the process of publishing it.
The workshop will be held in English and is limited to 15 participants. To register, name, last name and contact information should be sent to public.programs@saltonline.org.
Gunter Lösel is a researcher and actor, he holds a PhD in Theater Studies and a BA in Psychology. He is head of the program Research Focus in Performative Practice at the Zurich University of the Arts (Switzerland) and has been publishing on themes such as embodied cognition, improvisation, collaborative creativity and artistic research since 2004. He was the chief coordinator of the project Research Video (SNF-funded 2017-2021) and is the co-coordinator of the project The Answering Machine (funded by VW Foundation 2022-2026).
Ninja Hoffmann, is a project manager at ZHdK and co-founder of Butterfly. She leads the Digital Assistance program, which was established to support digital teaching.
SESSION I
16.00 - 16.35 Rebecca Schneider: “Not, Yet: When Our Art is in Our Hands”
Brown University, USA
“How can one conserve performance-based art?” “What would it mean to think of performance as itself a mode of conservation?” By drawing on recent conversations she has had with conservation theorist Hanna B. Hölling, Schneider will examine what performance might teach us about endurance, duration, fungibility and the “not, yet.”
Rebecca Schneider is a Professor of Modern Media and Culture at Brown University (USA). She is the author of The Explicit Body in Performance (1997), Performing Remains: Art and War in Times of Theatrical Reenactment (2011), Theatre and History (2014), and the long form essay “Slough Media” in Remain (2019). Her work has been supported by the Guggenheim Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. She is currently working on a digital book on gesture titled Standing Still Moving: The Arts of Gesture in Lateral Time, and the project Shoaling in the Sea of History taking up media, performance, history, and the oceanic for which she was named a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow.
16.35 - 16.45 Q&A
16.50 - 17.25 Heike Roms: “When Yoko Ono Did Not Come to Wales: Locating the Early History of Performance Art”
University of Exeter, UK
Roms will introduce What’s Welsh for Performance?, a long-term research project through which she is investigating strategies for the historicization and archiving of early performance art, especially work created in the supposedly marginal cultural context of Wales between 1965 and 1979. The research utilizes performative forms of staging, recording, and archiving this history, including oral history formats, re-enactments, installations, exhibitions and guided tours. She will discuss what such approaches reveal about Wales’s performance past, and ask whether performance art’s history can indeed be thought of as belonging to a place and time.
Heike Roms is a Professor in Theater and Performance at the University of Exeter (UK). Her research into the history and historiography of early performance art was supported by a large grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (2009-2011), and won the UK’s David Bradby TaPRA Award for Outstanding Research in 2011. She has published on performance art history and historiography, archiving and documentation, and performance art education. She is currently working on a book with the working title When Yoko Ono Did Not Come to Wales: Locating the Early History of Performance Art.
17.25 - 17.35 Q&A
17.35 - 17.50 Coffee Break
SESSION II
17:50 - 18.25 Robert Jarosz: “The Foundation and Practices of the Polish Performance Archive”
Muzeum Sztuki Nowoczesnej w Warszawie, Poland
Jarosz will focus on the Polish Performance Archive founded in 2015 and will present a short overview of subjects of presence / absence and pain in the history of Polish Performance. He will discuss particular performances by Adam Rzepecki, Józef Robakowski, Henryk Gajewski, Zbigniew Warpechowski, Anna Ciba, Zbyszko Trzeciakowski and Justyna Górowska.
Robert Jarosz is a curator, music producer, publisher, and the Head of Artists’ Archives at Muzeum Sztuki Nowoczesnej w Warszawie. He led many curatorial and editorial projects on Polish contemporary art and music.
18.25 - 18.35 Q&A
18.40 - 19.15 Esa Vincenty Nickle
Performa, USA
Performa is a performance art biennial that has been held in various venues and institutions in New York since 2005. Nickle will elaborate on Performa’s current project to provide access to the Performa archives and the organization’s commitment to building the archives through the process of commissioning and producing new works as well as the research and exploration of art history. She will also discuss the intersection of archives and content distribution and syndication in the 21st Century.
Esa Vincenty Nickle is the managing director and executive producer of Performa. She joined the Performa team in 2005 to help launch the first Performa biennial (Performa 05) as biennial coordinator. She was pivotal to the international Pavilions Without Walls program. She oversees all Performa commissions, international partnerships, and special events. Nickle has been the main manager of the Performa archives and was instrumental in developing the archives prototype.
19.15 - 19.25 Q&A
19.30 - 20.05 Rebecca Gordon: “Coda: On ‘re-elaborating’ Performance Art”
University College London, UK
Gordon will conclude the two-day conference with a coda*, as in reference to its use in classical music. This presentation, therefore, strives to draft “re-elaborations” of the thematic material expertly emphasized by the distinguished speakers and in turn, considers the device of “re-elaboration” as a structural and thematic premise by which to usher performance art into the future.
*Coda, meaning tail in Italian, is a musical term (and its symbol) that denotes the concluding section of a composition.
Rebecca A. Gordon is a researcher and writer in modern and contemporary art, specializing in the history and theory of contemporary art conservation. She is an associate lecturer in the History of Art Department at University College London (UK) and has taught at University of Glasgow (UK), New York University (USA), and University of Amsterdam (Netherlands). Her research has addressed issues of authenticity and material significance, artist’s intention, performing documentation, and the notion of an artwork’s ‘critical mass’.
20.05 - 20.15 Q&A and Closing remarks
