FuturePerfect

Presented by FuturePerfect and CPR—Center for Performance Research

A presentation and discussion with Barbara London (curator, MoMA), Alan Licht (musician, writer, curator; author of Sound Art: Beyond Music, Between Categories),  and members of the Norwegian art collective Verdensteatret—Lisbeth Bodd, Asle Nilsen and Piotr Pajchel.

What does the concept of performance mean today as artists increasingly fuse together traditional human centered notions of performance with the dynamics and actions of digital, material, and electromechanical processes and techniques? As the writer and artist Chris Salter reminds us: The preoccupation with performances by and for machines (if not human spectators) is rooted in the criss-crossing histories of automata, the imagined machine fantasies of industrial modernism, post-World War II military-industrial schemes, the advent of kinetic sculpture, industrial subculture, and finally, our long-standing interest in robots. These confluences are boldly evident in the transdisciplInary work of artists working at the intersection of installation, sound and performance.

Panelists talk about their work in relationship to these histories and ideas about inter-media, embodiment, presence, affect, materiality, and performativity.