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This presentation looks at questions of curatorial strategy in relation to performance and dance histories, and their re-activation and alteration through contemporary works. It focuses on what might be at stake, in temporal, experiential and mnemonic terms with new works and exhibitions that take fluid, processual and transformative approaches to the display of performance histories in the present. In particular it examines Moments: A History of Performance in 10 Acts (ZKM, 2012) both in terms of the revival of its constituent works and its curatorial sensibility. What is being re-performed and re-moved here, and what might such animations have to do with the survival and transmission of some of the more ineffable qualities of performance?
Adrian Heathfield writes on, curates and creates performance. His books include Out of Now, a monograph on the Taiwanese-American artist Tehching Hsieh and the edited collections Perform, Repeat, Record; Live: Art and Performance; Small Acts and Shattered Anatomies. His numerous essays have been translated into seven languages.
He is co-director of “Performance Matters”, an AHRC funded research project on the cultural value of performance for which he recently co-curated the Performing Idea events (2010). He co-curated the Live Culture events at Tate Modern, London (2003) and a number of other performance and durational events in European cities over the last ten years. He has worked with many artists and thinkers on critical and creative collaborations including talks, written dialogues, creative writing and workshop projects. He is Professor of Performance and Visual Culture at the University of Roehampton, London.
