From Artnet News (posted July 10, 2008):
PERFORMA 09: HOMAGE TO MARINETTI
Planning is already underway for Perrforma 09, the next instantiation of RoseLee Goldberg’s biannual performance art festival. The dates are set, Nov. 1-22, 2009, and the affair, which is described as a “festival as think tank,” is taking as its point of departure the publication of F.T. Marinetti’s “Futurist Manifesto,” which is 100 years old in 2009. Using “the Futurist template of manifestos-for-the-future in all disciplines,” Performa 09 promises to explore “new ideas in visual art, film, noise music, sound poetry, graphic design, dance, architecture and urbanism.” The festival also plans to spread out into the city itself, an effort that is characterized, in a flourish of notably Futurist rhetoric, as “an evolving ignition of ideas and of limitless dimensions.” Look for more info at www.performa-arts.org as the date gets closer.
I volunteered during PERFORMA 07, and while I got to take part in Yvonne Rainer’s “Ros Indexical” at the Hudson Theatre (where I saw Baryshnikov for the first time), and helped consruct a rectangular, roofless igloo in Cooper Square, I also had to sit through a lot of stuff which was at best ridiculous nonsense (He Yunchang’s naked “Mahjong”), at worst pretentious and lazy drivel (Ulla Von Brandenburg’s “La Maison”). Let’s hope PERFORMA 09′s more defined manifesto weeds out some of the lesser works ensuring a more coherent event.