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The series of publications by Performa Biennial offer a view into contemporary visual art performance.

Performa

This volume is the first in a series of important publications drawing content and inspiration from the Performa biennial. Featuring documentation by the 100 artists participating the first Performa, it offers an view into contemporary visual art performance and “performs” as a collective artists’ journal might. Photographs of each artist’s performance are accompanied by their scripts, sketches and storyboards, providing unique insight into process and upending conventions around archiving performance. Interviews with artists–including Francis Alys, Tamy Ben-Tor, Jesper Just, Marina Abramovic, Gelitin, Laurie Simmons and Mike Smith–appear alongside context-setting essays by the curators.

Performa

Defne Ayas (Author), RoseLee Goldberg (Author, Introduction), Jennifer Liese (Editor)

  • Paperback: 272 pages
  • Publisher: Performa (2007)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1424314984
  • ISBN-13: 978-1424314980

Performa 07: Everywhere and All at Once

Assembled by the pioneering scholar of performance art, RoseLee Goldberg, this volume documents new performances by some of the world’s most exciting visual artists, focusing on the relationship between contemporary dance and visual art, the ongoing legacy of “Happenings” inventor Allan Kaprow and the recent explosion of performance in China. Photographs, artists’ scripts, sketches, journals and storyboards are complemented by writings from prominent curators and critics, as well as interviews with Paul McCarthy, Dan Graham, Isaac Julien, Yvonne Rainer, Nathalie Djurberg, Jerome Bel and others.

Performa 07: Everywhere and All at Once

Catherine Wood (Author), RoseLee Goldberg (Author, Editor), Jay Sanders (Editor)

  • Paperback: 340 pages
  • Publisher: JRP|Ringier (2010)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 3037640340
  • ISBN-13: 978-3037640340

Performa 09: Back to Futurism.

Written and edited by Performa Founding Director and Curator RoseLee Goldberg, Performa 09: Back to Futurism is the definitive document of the Performa 09 biennial.

As the third volume to draw content and inspiration from the Performa biennials, this book features documentation by the 150 artists participating Performa 09 — among them Guy Ben-Ner, Candice Breitz, Omer Fast, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and Ari Benjamin Meyers, Mike Kelley, Arto Lindsay, Wangechi Mutu, Christian Tomaszewski and Joanna Malinowska, and Yeondoo Jung (all of whom presented special Performa Commissions), and Keren Cytter, Tacita Dean, Alicia Framis, Loris Greaud, William Kentridge, and Joan Jonas (who brought US premieres to the biennial).

Photos of each artist’s performance by renowned photographer Paula Court and texts contributed by a range of curators and critics provide accounts of every show, as well as an understanding of the importance of each work within the artist’s individual career and in relation to larger historical trends.

Taking place at over 80 of New York’s most exciting art and cultural venues, Performa 09 was created as a collaboration between all of these moving parts, so a portrait of the city’s remarkable history of cultural innovation also emerges from these pages.

Performa 09: Back to Futurism

RoseLee Goldberg (Editor, Introduction), Lana Wilson (Editor), Hal Foster (Foreword)

  • Paperback: 400 pages
  • Publisher: Performa Publications (2011)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0615450660
  • ISBN-13: 978-0615450667
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