Critical Lenses: A Toolkit for Watching
Performance art isn't passive. It demands a different way of looking. Before you go, arm yourself with this critical toolkit. Instead of asking "What does it mean?" start by asking "How does it work?"
1. The Body
Is the artist's body the *subject* (like a character) or the *material* (like paint)? Is it an athletic body, an exhausted body, a political body, or an absent body? How is it presented, costumed, or stressed?
2. Time
How is time used as a tool? Is the work based on duration and endurance? Is it fast and chaotic? Is it built on loops and repetition? How does the performance's length change your relationship to it?
3. Space
Why *here*? Is the performance in a "neutral" black box, a white cube gallery, or a loaded public site (like Federal Hall)? How does the space control you, the audience? Are you free to move, or fixed in a seat?
4. The Audience
What is your role? Are you a passive voyeur, a witness to a private act, or an active participant? Does the work acknowledge you? Does it need you to be complete? How does your presence (or your phone) change the work?
Anticipating the Commissions: A Preparatory Brief
Performa has commissioned eight major new works for 2025. Here is our guide to the key artists and the critical questions their work raises *before* you've even seen it.
Aria Dean: The Color Scheme
The Context: Dean is a formidable artist and theorist focused on how digital networks, race, and power are structured. Her work is often cool, conceptual, and rooted in sculpture and video.
- How does a "live" performance change her critique of digital systems?
- Is the "liveness" of the performers essential, or is this a diagram brought to life?
- Is she critiquing control, or is the performance itself an act of control over the audience?
Lina LapelytÄ—: The Speech (NYC)
The Context: A 2019 Venice Golden Lion winner, LapelytÄ— uses music and song to create witty, incisive critiques of modern life. She is staging this new work at Federal Hall, a monument to American democracy and capitalism.
- Is the building just a dramatic backdrop, or is it an active participant in the work?
- How will she use sound and voice to either fill or undermine the authority of that space?
- Is this a political speech, an opera, or something else entirely?
Camille Henrot
The Context: Henrot is known for her sprawling, associative work that connects anthropology, digital culture, and personal history (like the 2013 video "Grosse Fatigue"). Her move into live performance is a major event.
- Will the performance feel as fast and information-dense as her videos?
- How will she translate her "associative logic" from the screen to the stage?
- Is this a more personal, embodied work, or a continuation of her systems-level critique?
Sylvie Fleury: Instructions for Twilight
The Context: Fleury's work has famously used the language of fashion, luxury, and pop culture to critique consumerism and gender. Her work is slick, beautiful, and sharp.
- Is this a celebration or a critique of spectacle? Or both?
- In an age of Instagram, is a performance about "glamour" still subversive, or is it just more content?
- Are the performers models, sculptures, or characters?
Diane Severin Nguyen: WAR SONGS
The Context: Nguyen's photography is known for its intense, theatrical, and almost chemical relationship to its subjects. This first major live work promises to be visually saturated and emotionally complex.
- How does an artist who *stages* photographs translate that control into a *live* medium?
- Will the performance feel like a single, unfolding image, or something more chaotic?
- Is the "liveness" about vulnerability or about visual precision?
Tau Lewis: No one ascends from the underworld unmarked
The Context: Lewis is a sculptor who creates powerful, totemic figures from salvaged textiles and found objects. Her work is deeply invested in material history, diaspora, and myth-making.
- Are her sculptures becoming costumes, performers, or the audience?
- How does "liveness" activate the histories already embedded in her materials?
- Is this a narrative ritual or a living, breathing installation?
Ayoung Kim: Body^n
The Context: Kim is a tech-savvy artist who builds intricate, speculative worlds based on data, algorithms, and history. Her work challenges our sense of linear time and stable identity.
- Where is the "artist's body" when the work is driven by data? Is the algorithm a performer?
- As a viewer, are you processing information or having an experience?
- How does this fit the 1920s theme of new media revolutions?
Pakui Hardware (Lithuanian Pavilion)
The Context: This artist duo (Neringa ÄŒerniauskaitÄ— and Ugnius Gelguda) creates sleek, post-human installations that blend synthetic and organic forms. Their work often feels like a sterile, futuristic operating theater.
- How will they introduce the "messiness" of a live body into their clean, surgical aesthetic?
- Is the performer a 'ghost in the machine' or just another high-tech component?
- Are we in a lab, a spa, or a morgue?
Conversation Starters: 10 Topics for Your Biennial Debate
You've seen the show. Now, what to talk about? Use our guide to start the right conversations—from the queue at the Performa Hub to the post-performance dinner.
- The "Liveness" Paradox: Is a performance still "live" if it's designed to be perfectly captured for Instagram? With Sylvie Fleury's high-gloss aesthetic, are we viewers or just content creators?
- AI as Performer: In Ayoung Kim's work, is the algorithm a co-performer or just a very complex script? Where does the artist's "body" end and the algorithm's begin?
- The Ethics of Re-staging: Is re-performing Lucinda Childs' 1964 "Street Dance" an essential act of historical preservation, or a nostalgic gesture that robs the original of its context?
- The Hub vs. The City: Does the new Diller Scofidio + Renfro-designed Hub centralize energy, or does it domesticate the radical, city-wide sprawl that has always defined Performa?
- Activism as Aesthetics: With a "free" performance by a legend like Regina José Galindo, how do we separate a genuine political act from a performance that merely adopts the *look* of protest for an art audience?
- The 'Site-Specific' Test: Lina LapelytÄ— is at Federal Hall. Is the venue a deep conceptual partner to the work, or just a dramatic, "only-in-New-York" backdrop? Does the work change the space, or does the space just "elevate" the work?
- The 1920s Anchor: Performa is looking back at the 1920s. Are we seeing a genuine dialogue with that decade's media revolutions (film, radio) in our own (AI, digital), or is it just a convenient historical costume?
- From Object to Action: When sculptors like Tau Lewis or object-makers like Pakui Hardware are commissioned, are their "living sculptures" a radical new form, or are they just installations with a pulse?
- The Julie Mehretu Question: By honoring a visual art superstar who has worked in performance, is Performa celebrating its cross-disciplinary success or signaling a "safer," more blue-chip future?
- The Endurance Test: We all know the stereotype of the 12-hour performance. When does duration stop being a meaningful artistic tool (testing the body, time) and start becoming a barrier to entry or a gimmick?