Series | Performance Space New York

Fall Programming 2024

As the new Artistic Director of Performance Space New York, I’m often asked how I plan to make my mark on the organization. To be honest, I am thinking about entirely different things. I consider my position to be rooted in service, driven by transparency, collectivity, and collaboration, rather than ego. Our upcoming fall season of programming at Performance Space epitomizes this ethos in so many ways, and was collaboratively envisioned by our whole team, especially our inaugural Keith Haring Curatorial Fellow X Arriaga, Associate Director Ana Bé Sepúlveda, Senior Director Pati Hertling, and in very small part by me.

Together, we say yes to artists again and again: artists like Black Quantum Futurism, who presented a concert at the end of 2023 and are invited back to Performance Space to create a year-long installation and accompanying program in Open Room, The Memory Vortex Inn; Open Movement workshop participant, Nile Harris, returns as our Organizational Strategic Consultant.

We create community gathering spaces through our monthly recurring First Monday’s program organized by Sarah Schulman; our weekly Open Movement program curated and facilitated by Monica Mirabile; and an evening of interdisciplinary performances with The Whitney Review that uplifts the unique importance of libraries as free public spaces at a moment when New York City’s public libraries have successfully advocated for the restoration of their budgets after months of tireless campaigning.

We recognize the interdisciplinary nature of performance through programs with Keioui Keijaun Thomas that incorporate video, installation, and performance, as well as countless community partnerships that pop up as need and interest arise that we remain flexible to be able to organize throughout the year.

We embrace artists’ personal biographies: Adán Vallecillo pays tribute to his sister and her community of Honduran care workers, and Hillary Taymour of Collina Strada revisits her childhood as a horse-girl.

We honor our ancestors through a day-long music program with Blank Forms celebrating the life and work of Catherine Christer Hennix, as well as a symposium and movement-based performance with Bintou Dembélé who explores ritual and corporeal memories of marronnage.

Join us as we say YES to artists, YES to community, YES to interdisciplinarity, YES to our personal histories, YES to our ancestors, YES to everybody.

xT

First Mondays: Readings of New Works In Progress (Fall 2024)

First Mondays invites our communities to experience readings of un-published works and works in progress by an intergenerational group of vanguard writers. This season we continue to gather over free drinks in our theaters to hear writers discuss what’s on their mind and get a glimpse of the future of literature.

This fall returns with three new events: The Snow Queen, a new musical composed and directed by Dudley Saunders (October 7); The Art of Precision and Imagination with Jason England, Lauren Michelle Jackson, and Caryl Phillips ( November 4); and Icons with Gary Indiana, Robert Reid-Pharr, and Lynne Tillman (December 2).

For more than 5 years, First Mondays has brought readers and writers together to celebrate the written word from diverse perspectives and genres, all for free.

Black Quantum Futurism: The Memory Vortex Inn (Ongoing)

Community Space

Open Room
September 20, 2024 – June 30, 2025
Tuesday – Sunday | 12 – 6pm

Free (Check out the line-up below)

The Memory Vortex Inn is a year-long installation in Open Room, our gallery and community space. The Inn will include a program of film screenings, readings, sound healing sessions, performances, and workshops organized by Rasheedah Phillips and Camae Ayewa of Black Quantum Futurism, Performance Space New York, and all of our communities. Black Quantum Futurism transforms Open Room into a sanctuary prioritizing community-based work that uplifts temporal autonomy, play, experimentation, spatial reclamation, and collective visioning.

The Memory Vortex Inn is a sanctuary nestled within the liminal corridors of time, blending the realms of Black temporalities, the mysteries of quantum physics, and the interwoven heritage of African and Afro-Diasporic time and memory practices. The duo’s work intersects futurism, creative media, DIY-aesthetics, and activism in marginalized communities. Building on themes present throughout their work, but site-specific to Performance Space, The Inn calls attention to our ability to manipulate space-time and to imagine and build new realities. Crafted with a retrocausal blueprint, this Inn unfurls backwards into the cosmos, tracing our origins and our potential paths, standing as a spacetime for the disentangling and rethreading of our time-bound narratives, fostering a communal space for the re-envisioning of what has been and what could be, with a deliberate focus on the unique temporal and spatial experiences that encourage an experimental dance with the dimensions of time and space.The installation is designed with elements such as the “Oral Futures Jukebox,” where visitors can record their own memories and stories and listen back to others’. The space will also feature retractable microphones to encourage spontaneous performances, a library, a synth laboratory, and interactive clock sculptures that embody the principles of temporal abundance, all within a setting that evokes the comfort and community spirit of a lounge, the restful embrace of an inn, and the creative vibrancy of a convening.

The Memory Vortex Inn is in service of a future where we—the collective—are stewarding, not just land, but reality itself. Black Quantum Futurism’s interest in creating communal space-time aligns more generally with the ethos of Open Room, which is accessible to the public to use throughout the year. We welcome you to hang out, work, use our free WIFI, and relax, even when no programs are scheduled.

Spring/Summer Season (2024)

This Spring-Summer season pays homage to our historical legacy characterized by a commitment to risk-taking and deliberate disruption of established artistic and social paradigms. Performance Space continues its focus on the utilization of intentional deconstruction to clear the path for regeneration, transcending us to new realms and dimensions.

Join us this Spring as artists delve into the vestiges of our shared history and craft an innovative vision for the future, guiding audiences through non-linear and queer temporal experiences through song, dance, and visionary forms of performance.

John Giorno Octopus Series (Fall 2023)

Using the Octopus’s decentralized nervous system as an inspiration for Performance Space New York’s curatorial practice, the John Giorno Octopus Series invites artists and guest curators to organize an evening-length program with several artists working in any number of disciplines. The series is named after legendary performance poet, John Giorno, and continues Performance Space’s legacy of artist-centric programming and creating space for risk-taking.