Exhibition
Performance Archiving Performance
11/06/13-01/12/14
Performances · Exhibition-Related
The Sky Remains the Same: The Archive of Lovett/Codagnone’s WEIGHTED (2010)
Cover Image:
Lovett/Codagnone, WEIGHTED, 2010. Performance at the ICA, Philadelphia. Photo: Courtesy the artists.
Presented in conjunction with Performa 13. Programmed in conjunction with “Performance Archiving Performance,” a presentation of works that engage archive as medium, on view in the Fifth Floor Resource Center from November 6, 2013–January 12, 2014.
After two weeks of archival research and open rehearsals, Julie Tolentino performs the archive of Lovett/Codagnone’s WEIGHTED. Originally performed at Dixon Place in 2010, this work was selected by Lovett/Codagnone specifically to be archived by Tolentino. WEIGHTED utilizes minimal and repetitive movements, deliberately referencing dance and theater avant-gardes, and is accompanied by a soundtrack that includes excerpts from The End of Imagination (1998) by Arundhati Roy. The short duet addresses failure as a “feasible, honorable” possibility, and questions the concept of death as the ultimate failure of life. This iteration of Tolentino’s “The Sky Remains the Same” expands the notion of the body of the artist as an archive to include the presence of multiple archiving bodies. Constructed as a duet, WEIGHTED is executed here in its authorized archival form as a four-hour durational repetition of the same score, performed in sequential pairings by John Lovett, Alessandro Codagnone, Julie Tolentino, and Stosh Fila. A talkback with the artists concludes the event.
Julie Tolentino
Julie Tolentino’s career spans over two decades of dance, installation, and site-specific durational performance. Her diverse roles have included host, producer, mentor, and collaborator with artists such as Meg Stuart, Ron Athey, Madonna, Catherine Opie, David Rousseve, Juliana Snapper, Diamanda Galàs, Stosh Fila, Robert Crouch, Elana Mann, Mark So, Gran Fury, and Rodarte. Tolentino is deeply influenced by her extensive experience as a caregiver, an Eastern and aquatic bodyworker, a highly disciplined contemporary dancer, and as proprietress of Clit Club in New York. Her manifold, exploratory duet/solo practice includes installation, dance-for-camera, and durational performance engaging improvisation one-to-one score-making and fluids, including blood, tears, and honey. As an extension of her practice after twenty-five years in New York City, she designed and built a solar-powered live–work residency in the Mohave Desert called FERAL House and Studio, where she explores the remote forms of physical inquiry through landscape and texts. She has received numerous grants and fellowships. She is currently the editor of Provocations in the Drama Review-TDR (MIT Press). Her works have been commissioned by The Kitchen, Participant Inc., Invisible Exports, Performa ’05, and in the UK by Spill Festival, Tramway, DanceExchange, and queerupnorth. Recent tours include England, Europe, Myanmar, the Philippines (at Manila Contemporary and Green Papaya Gallery), and Theaterworks in Singapore. She has been presented at Broad Art Space at University California Los Angeles (UCLA), Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), Commonwealth & Council, Honor Fraser, PSI19 at Stanford, Perform Chinatown, and Install Weho. In 2013, she created new performance and objects for the Reanimation Library Project in Joshua Tree, FIRE IN HER BELLY at Maloney Fine Art, LACE Auction 2013, Body/Mind at Cypress Gallery, High Desert Test Sites 2013, and an Aaron Turner collaboration at Night Gallery, Los Angeles. She will be premiering new works at UCLA, NYU Abu Dhabi, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in 2014. She is currently based in Los Angeles and Joshua Tree.
Lovett/Codagnone
Lovett/Codagnone is an artist team working together in New York since 1995 using photography, performance, video, sound, and installation. Their work address issues of collective identity and relations of power in social structures focusing on the absorption of underground tactics of resistance. Important theoretical and aesthetic influences in their production are derived from the work of historical radical figures in literature, critical thinking, cinema, theater, and punk music. In 2008, they formed the band CANDIDATE with musician Michele Pauli. CANDIDATE performances have featured among others Jim Fletcher, Gary Indiana, and Kate Valk. Recent solo exhibitions: Francesco Pantaleone Arte Contemporanea, Palermo; Cantieri Culturali alla Zisa, Palermo, 2013; Museo Marino Marini, Florence; LAXART, Los Angeles, 2012; September Galerie, Berlin, 2011; Sculpture Center, New York, 2010; MoMA P.S.1, New York, 2007–08. Recent performances have been presented at MoMA P.S.1, 2012; the ICA Philadelphia; Judson Memorial Church, New York, 2010; and the ICA Boston, 2007. Their work has been shown at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Cobra Museum, Amstelveen, the Netherlands, 2008; the Ludwig Museum, Cologne, 2005; De Appel, Amsterdam, 2005; Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst, Berlin, 2003; Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2002.
Sponsors
Generous endowment support is provided by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Skadden, Arps Education Programs Fund, and the William Randolph Hearst Endowed Fund for Education Programs at the New Museum.
This program is made possible, in part, through the support of the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.
Education and public programs are made possible by a generous grant from Goldman Sachs Gives at the recommendation of David B. Heller & Hermine Riegerl Heller.
