Artists’ Talk with Jennifer Krasinski and Andrew Lampert

Jennifer Krasinski and Andrew Lampert will share aspects of their ongoing research into Richard Foreman. Working together, they have uncovered a plethora of documentation and unstaged material that will be featured in a forthcoming exhibition dedicated to Foreman and his collaborators in the Ontological-Hysteric Theater. They will discuss their process and consider the question of what it means to transmit experience. Foreman's iconoclastic productions are largely irreproducible, and yet they must always be performed anew in order to be seen. What is involved in authentically staging the work of a theater artist who insists that others must not interpret or imitate him when performing his plays? Reception to follow. 

Co-moderated by Rye Gentleman and Helen Shaw.

Co-sponsored by the Department of Performance Studies and the Division of Libraries. Presented as part of NYU's "Archives Onstage" series, Richard Foreman Wants You to Wake Up.

ARTIST BIOS:

Andrew Lampert's moving image and performance work has been widely exhibited at venues including the Whitney Museum of American Art, Centre Pompidou, Getty Museum, New York Film Festival, and Toronto International Film Festival. His recent curatorial projects include the shows Ken Jacobs: Up The Illusion at NYU's 80WSE Gallery, My Harry at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and Attention Line at Artists Space in New. York City. Lampert has edited books on artists including Tony Conrad, Manuel De Landa, George Kuchar, Harry Smith and William Wegman. He co-authors the monthly advice columns Hard Truths and Hard Choice with Howie Chen for in Art in America magazine. Formerly the Curator of Collections at Anthology Film Archives, he has preserved hundreds of canonical experimental and independent films and videos. Further Reading, the new publishing imprint that he is launching with Christine Burgin, will debut in Spring 2025 with five titles.

Jennifer Krasinski is a writer and cultural critic who contributes to 4Columns, Bookforum, the New York Review of Books, the New Yorker (Goings On), and other publications. Her essays have been published in numerous books and catalogs including Reza Abdoh, Jill Johnston: The Disintegration of a Critic, and Hilton Als's Andy Warhol: The Series. She was an art columnist for the Village Voice from 2014 to 2018, and served as both senior editor at Artforum and later as the magazine’s digital editorial director. She taught at Art Center College of Design, New York University, Yale University, and is currently teaching in the MFA Art program at Lesley University. She is the recipient of an Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant (2012), a Rauschenberg residency, and is a 2023–24 MacDowell fellow.

Richard Foreman Wants You to Wake Up

Presented by Archives Onstage 

Description: A celebration of the ongoing impact of Richard Foreman and the Ontological-Hysteric Theatre. NYU's "Archives Onstage," an interdisciplinary, cross-campus series, aims to activate the NYU Division of Libraries’ significant performing arts-related archival holdings in relation to contemporary art and scholarship on campus. Using panels, talks, performance and more, the series situates these archives as integral to the past, present and future lives of the university and its neighboring Downtown artistic communities.

Coordinated by Rye Gentleman, J de Leon, and Helen Shaw.

OTHER EVENTS :

Richard Foreman’s Work as a Sledgehammer: Criticism, Aesthetics, and the Ontological-Hysteric Legacy

Bobst Library, 2nd Floor Reading Room, 70 Washington Square S, NYC

Monday, September 30th 2024, 6:00pm

Description: Many of the great downtown and avant garde creators who had contact with Richard Foreman went on to make their own work, sometimes in collaboration with or confrontation with his image. Foreman’s complex, often baffling, always overwhelming art called out the best in both the artists who saw it and the critics who wrote about it. Join us for a conversation with those critics and artists who know Foreman’s work from the inside out—and form his living archive. Sponsored by NYU’s Division of Libraries Reception to follow.

Panelists will include Elizabeth LeCompte, Kate Valk, Ben Brantley, and others.

Foreman Reunion 

NYU Skirball Center, 566 LaGuardia Pl, NYC

Sunday, October 6th 2024, 3:00pm

The world of Richard Foreman was and is immense. It can sometimes seem as though all of Downtown theatre at some point passed through a Foreman production. His aesthetic impact internationally and his omnipresence in New York mean that, even if we have never seen a Richard Foreman production, we are still living in the theatre that he made. In an unprecedented gathering of his collaborators, NYU Skirball and the Division of Libraries celebrate this magisterial, mischievous Loki of the avant garde. Co-sponsored by NYU Skirball and the Division of Libraries. Closing reception to follow.

Guests will include Richard Foreman, Jay Sanders, numerous Foreman alums, and more.

Foreman Exhibit

NYU Skirball Center Lower Lobby, 566 LaGuardia Pl, NYC

Mid-September 2024 through mid-December 2024

A celebration of the aesthetic dimensions of Foreman’s work featuring original posters, production photos, and drawings housed in NYU Special Collections’ Richard Foreman and Kate Manheim Papers collection. Co-sponsored by NYU Skirball and the Division of Libraries