Description
When Brian O’Doherty first published his famous essay Inside the White Cube, The Ideology of the Gallery Space in 1976, he provocatively questioned the gallery space and system. Already one year earlier, RoseLee Goldberg had argued that the emerging arts practices at that time, as conceptual art or performance art, amongst others, negotiate space radically differently. 30 years later, Goldberg resumes that performance art today has, finally, become interesting for museums, but is still overlooked or rather presented as part of an event-like side programme of biennials or art fairs. Goldberg rather suggests to reflect how to give performance a specific time and space.When it comes to ArtsonMain in Johannesburg, South Africa, a conglomerate full of white-washed spaces, one might want to keep in mind, that the white cube is close-knit with (post-war) western art. How is performance art presented in those spaces full of both internal (art-world) connotations and indirect notation of powerful regimes of the gaze? Could performance art still work as form of institutional critique or has the art form internalized the white cube already? Or rather should the relationships between the notion of performance as (ephemeral) action and performative representation in media such as video and photography be challenged?
Through live-performances, performative video installations, performative photography, lectures, guides and talks, the exhibition project shall question common notions of performance and performativity, the representation and visibility of this art practice in South Africa and abroad will be discussed.