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Live architecture-focused performances will debut across New York City this November

Performa

Live architecture-focused performances will debut across New York City this November

Performa, an organization dedicated to live performance across various disciplines, will be launching a new program centered around the relationship between architecture and performance in New York City for their seventh edition of the Performa Biennial.

The program, titled Circulations, is comprised of site-specific live performances and architectural experimentations in iconic venues throughout the city. Through performance, Circulations aims to examine the movement of bodies in space while looking at how architecture exists in today’s built environment.

“From our daily routines, to the spaces that Performa identifies as frame or backdrop for Performa Commissions, it is the built environment that shapes our behavior and impacts our understanding of space,” said RoseLee Goldberg, founding director and curator of Performa, in a press release.

Projects by various architects will be brought to life. Montreal-based architect François Dallegret’s “The Environment-Bubble,” a blueprint envisioning a flexible dome capable of hosting multiple occupants, will become a (temporary) reality and roam the city as an inflatable structure, hosting dance workshops. Philip Johnson’s Glass House will be occupied by French artist Jimmy Robert, transforming the icon into a stage “that delves into the intersections of architecture, visibility, and black representation.”

Other artists and architects will present installations and performances, including a collaboration between the Marching Cobras of New York, a Harlem-based after-school drum line and dance team, with Bryony Roberts and Mabel O. Wilson, architects and professors at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP). This performance, “Marching On,” was commissioned by the Storefront for Art and Architecture.

“New York, with its dense urban fabric and complex history—from its Downtown mystique to its real estate–driven present—is the ideal location for a program like this,” said Charles Aubin, principal curator of Circulations, in the press release. “The artists and architects treat the city as a platform for experimentation where human beings and their activities confront the built environment.”

Performa will also be launching a publication focusing on historical and contemporary works by architects who have incorporated performance into their practice, as well as a symposium that further examines the historical relationship between buildings and cities.

Circulations will take place from November 1 to 19, 2017.

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