Show Category: Performance

 
The AIDS epidemic had a devastating, lasting impact on the downtown artist community. Some of Performance Space New York’s most influential artists (John Bernd, Ethyl Eichelberger, Ron Vawter, David Wojnarowicz among many others) died prematurely, leaving a gaping hole in this community and a subsequent generation without important mentorship. When Ishmael Houston-Jones first started working on THEM at Performance Space 122 in 1985, with a text by Dennis Cooper and a cacophonous live electric guitar score by Chris Cochrane, it was intended to be a poetic and frank coming-of-age story of gay men. By the time it was first premiered here in 1986, AIDS was ravaging queer communities, and the artists felt it would be disingenuous not to address it in the work. They consequently included coded allusions to the epidemic and turned THEM into one of the most haunting pieces of art that came out of the early AIDS years.
 
*Post-Show Talk with Visual AIDS on June 27.
 

Penny Arcade is the undisputed queen of downtown performance, and Bitch! Dyke! Faghag! Whore! is her biggest hit. A freedom of speech rallying cry, the raucous sex and censorship show premiered at Performance Space 122 in 1990 during the height of the culture wars, when ultra-conservative politicians pressured the National Endowment for the Arts into defunding artists who made work that was considered “offensive to the average person.” Deeply invested in the political role of art, Arcade sees a need to reassess the subject matter of censorship now—especially the “self-censorship coming from the left in the form of political correctness in today’s culture.”
 

Sarah Michelson has been a defining presence at Performance Space 122 through the years, first as a dancer in the 1990s, then showing her own early work in peer-curated programs like Hothouse, followed by the evening-length pieces Group Experience (2001), Shadowmann Part II (2003), and Daylight (2005), which established her as one of the most original voices of her generation. After a 13-year hiatus, Michelson returns to Performance Space New York with a new piece that considers her own history with the organization, the building, and the community from which her work emanates.
 
Photo by Dona Ann McAdams.
 

Harnessing a combination of thrift store finds and individual customizations, the DIY look that originated from downtown NYC was first broadcast by MTV in 1981, and quickly influenced how young people were dressing all around the world. As youth culture is now instantly co-opted as marketable fashion, the idiosyncratic designs of multifarious fashion-oriented project, Women’s History Museum, present a counter cultural form of self-expression that resists mainstreaming. Founded by Amanda K McGowan and Mattie Rivkah Barringer in 2014, the collective stages an extended theatrical runway presentation of their latest collection.
 
The show will include musical performances by Riichpsycho and Just The Right Height
 

Organized by Tina Satter with works by Jess Barbagallo with Lauren Bakst & Shana Fletcher, Ariana Reines, Jim Fletcher, I.U.D., Ser Brandon-Castro Serpas, Jeremy O. Harris with Jesse Rasmussen, Anne Waldman with Erika Hodges & Janice Lowe, Tina Satter with Emily Davis & Amber Gray, and Diamond Stingily
 
Kathy Acker: “In the beginning there was a young girl…” brings together a group of artists, writers, and performers whose practices and output at times recall the spirit of Kathy Acker and her work, but are also very different. Their collision with her writing and life offers us a necessary live communion with what Acker gave and what is still to come.