What does a consultant do?
What are they offering?
What are they consulting on?
And what solutions do they provide?
 
“Consultants are the wackest performers of corporate America,” says artist Nile Harris, setting the tone for his year-long engagement with Performance Space New York as an Organizational Strategic Consultant. He immerses himself in the inner workings of the organization and uses consultancy as a framework to explore the intricacies of non-profit institutional governance, culminating in a lecture-based performance.
 
Harris seeks to engage with our staff and board members, conducting one-on-one interviews and dropping in on our meetings. His love for downtown theater draws him to research the Performance Space archives, and bridge the legacies of PS122’s avant-garde history with our evolving contemporary identity. He’s interested in serving as a sounding board for important questions like, “Why is the front door always locked?” Throughout the year, Harris will spontaneously present marginal micro-performances, such as reading the bylaws of the Board of Directors in the hallways and making slideshow presentations about his findings, ultimately consulting on…(?) With a background in nonprofit administration and as the co-artistic director of New York theater company, Ping Chong and Company, Harris poetically reflects on his genuine interest in bureaucratic systems and structures that he himself is deeply familiar with. Harris refers to the writings of Stefano Harney and Fred Moten who lament, “The consultant is not here to provide solutions, innovation, or even advice. The consultant exists to demonstrate access in the era of logistical capitalism.”
 
Through this consultancy, Harris lovingly reveals the circuitous, nonsensical, and bureaucratic nature of nonprofits, holding up a mirror for us to examine our own organizational structures.