Fall 2016 Events

  • Evidence

    Evidence is a new multidisciplinary performance series showcasing the various artistic backgrounds of the current M.A. candidates in Performance Studies at NYU Tisch School of the Arts. Performance Studies candidates at NYU are comprised of a diverse group of young people who hail from around the globe. We've gathered in NYC to engage in deep study of performance theories. In early fall we invite you to join us as we shake loose our academic skins to share and celebrate this convergence of culture, theory, and performance.

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  • Self-Wounding as War Magic: Tangki Spirit Medium Worship

    In this lecture, Margaret Chan will provide an analysis of Tangki spirit medium worship. Such an analysis allows us to understand the communal and cultural forces that shaped an ancient performance practice and which still remain relevant to modern society.

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  • Baring It: Self-Exposure in Feminist Performance

    In this roundtable conversation, artists Karen Finley and Narcissister will join Barbara Browning, Associate Professor of Performance Studies, NYU, to discuss continuing debates around self-exposure in women’s art.

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  • Life & Death on the New York Dance Floor, 1980 to 1983

    A one-day symposium featuring Tim Lawrence (University of East London), Bernie Gendron (music historian), Leonard Abrams (East Village Eye), Patti Astor (downtown actor, Fun Gallery, Wild Style),Johnny Dynell (Mudd Club, Pyramid, Danceteria, Area), Steven Harvey (New York Rocker), Danny Krivit (Roxy), Sal Principato (Liquid Liquid), John Robie (musician, producer), Sharon White (The Saint), Pat Ivers & Emily Armstrong (Nightclubbing), Kit Fitzgerald (video artist), Marvin Taylor(NYU), Jeffrey Deitch (gallerist), Michael Holman (Canal Zone, Gray, Negril, breaking impresario), Chi Chi Valenti (Mudd Club, Danceteria), Michael Zilkha (ZE Records), & Sukhdev Sandhu (NYU)

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  • Giorgio Agamben's "The Coming Community"

    For the 2016 Tisch Day of Community, the Department of Performance Studies will materialize the performative utterance that is our department's title by collectively reading Giorgio Agamben's "The Coming Community" (trans. Michael Hardt).

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  • PRAXIS, INC. 2016

    PRAXIS, a special all-day Performance Studies community event, brings together current students, alumni, faculty, staff, prospective students and friends, to learn new skills, engage in important conversations, and stay connected with colleagues and peers.

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  • Carolee Schneemann: Unforgivable

    In conjunction with the publication "Carolee Schneemann: Unforgivable" (Black Dog Publishing, 2016) artist Carolee Schneemann and scholar Kenneth White will be in conversation for an informal evening exploring the legacy of Schneemann's work.

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  • Literary Improvisation, Hermes’s Farts, and Communitas

    Improv is a form with roots that go back well before 60’s happenings, experimental theatre, and Keith Johnstone. Randy Fertel will explore what light Victor Turner’s idea of communitas sheds on improv, and what light the long, unacknowledged literary tradition of improv reflects back on Turner’s idea.

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  • Climbing: From Bios to Zoe and Beyond

    Professor André Lepecki collaborates with Margret Grebowicz (Goucher College), Ed Keller (Parsons, The New School) and Nicola Masciandaro (Brooklyn College, CUNY) in a one-day transdisciplinary symposium.

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  • Queer/Animal/Theory: Psychoanalysis & Subjectivity

    Both animal studies and queer theory share theoretical inheritances, even as they diverge in some of their philosophical and political commitments. This talk with Carla Freccero assesses the (non-exclusive) reciprocal impact of animal studies and queer theory.

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  • Black Box, White Cube: Fifty Shades of Grey?: A Lecture by Claire Bishop

    Claire Bishop will discuss how performance has accommodated itself to the museum, and what this accommodation reveals about changes in temporality, attention, and the public sphere.

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  • Black Narratives of Living: a roundtable conversation

    A discussion with R.A. Judy, John Keene, and Fred Moten.

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  • Evidence: The Party

    Evidence is a low-stakes performance series organized to showcase the various artistic backgrounds of the current candidates in Performance Studies at NYU Tisch School of the Arts.

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  • Bronx Cuts: A Talk by Laura Harris

    This paper will examine a series of “cuts” made in the South Bronx in the context of the brutal “renewal” of New York City in the 1960s and 70s. Focusing in particular on architectural cuttings made by artist Gordon Matta-Clark, and smaller-scale cuttings made by Vickie Alvarez, a teenage member of the Roman Queens street gang (recounted in a video she helped compose), it explores the forms of creative habitation these cuts imagine and enact as they too “renew” and rearticulate the space and social life of the South Bronx.

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