Active Ingredients: Prompts, Props, Performance

Active Ingredients: Prompts, Props, Performance

Active Ingredients: Prompts, Props, Performance flips the script; it reveals the performativity of art objects, and the objectness of human performers. This two-part project consists of a gallery-based exhibition and a series of performances that together meditate on the meanings, subtleties, and complications of the term “performance.”

The exhibition casts props and sculptures as “performers” that prompt audience actions and interactions. The live series, A People’s History of Performance Art, stages iconic photographs of canonical performance art as tableaux vivants, turning actors into objects. Active Ingredients calls into question the distinction between “live and ephemeral” and “dead and static.”

DATES
10/20/17 - 1/7/18

CURATORS

Collaboratively organized by Lisa Dorin, Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs and Curator for Contemporary Art; Amy Holzapfel, Chair and Associate Professor of Theatre; David Levine, artist and director; and Marsha Ginsberg, artist and designer.