Issue #50
Summer 2017
The cover of PJ50 is conceived as content in and of itself. Something that we can read on its own rather than an enticement for what’s inside. Congressman John Lewis is a civil rights icon; his oration resounds in collective memory. Transcripts of his speeches from the 1963 March on Washington and the 2017 testimony against Senator Jeff Sessions as nominee for Attorney General wrap around this issue as front and back cover. There is no one-to-one correlation with these transcripts and the content in this issue, but there are links and an extension of scale beyond artistic and institutional practice into broader discussions of democracy, civic responsibility and activism.
Editorial team
Editor-In-Chief
Moriah Evans
Managing Editor
Lauren Bakst - Buck Wanner
Copy Editor
Tom Jacobs
Contributing Editor
Matthew Lyons - Jaime Shearn Coan - Tara Aisha Willis - Ursula Eagly
Ad Layout
Catherine Galasso
Intern
Heather Meehan
Aurora Prevelic - Jessica Lam
Articles
Letters From The Editor - I
The cover of PJ50 is conceived as content in and of itself. Something that we can read on its own rather than an enticement for what’s inside. Congressman John Lewis...
Letters From the Editors - II
For the past twenty issues of the Performance Journal, the cover image and interior portfolio has been dedicated to the work of a single artist, or in two instances, an...
Diane Torr and Me: 1948-2017
Mike Sapol took me to his communal living space on Grand Street in 1977 I think. There were individual bedrooms surrounding a vast dance floor. In the center of that...
Latifa Laabissi’s Self Portrait Camouflage: Strategic Assemblage and/or Harmful Cultural Appropriation? The Native Headdress Controversy
This essay explores a recent discussion on cultural appropriation in Latifa Laâbissi’s performance Self Portrait Camouflage (2006), a work exploring cultural memories of colonial oppression in the French context, which...
The Time that It Takes
TIME! I’ve been learning about modern physics with my kindergartener. We learned that time does not, in fact, exist in a sequence, but that it is a dimension, like space,...
Trisha Brown
Project Page
Diversity and Accountability: A Conversation with the Movement Research Artists of Color Council
On November 2, 2016, Movement Research’s Artist of Color Council held its first public event, a Studies Project discussion with core council members Alicia ayo Ohs, Lisa Parra, Marýa Wethers,...
Inverted Path: Ana Janevski
Moriah Evans : How long have you been living in New York? Ana Janevski : It’s been exactly six years. ME : And the whole time, you’ve been working at...
Daily Rituals
Recently, I had an injury that required me to regularly dress a wound. Twice a day, morning and evening, I had to clean the area, using specific tools and following...
Unfamiliar Intimacies: On taisha paggett, EJ Hill and Wordless Touching
During the first three weeks of April, 2017, videos of multiple incidents of nonconsensual contact between airline staff and flight passengers made national headlines. On April 9th, an overbooked United...
125 st[reet]* a re-thing to re-member: Nia Love and Marjani Forté
Movement Research Performance Journal: When did the two of you meet? What was the catalyst that drove you to begin making work together? Nia Love: I met Marjani in 1990...
Movement Research at the Judson Church: A Portfolio of Process
Movement Research at Judson Church can be approached both as a singular, timebound experience made up of unique events and as part of a 25 year continuum that has changed...
Researching Movement with Judson’s Angels
On Monday nights from 1993 through 1996, in the vast center of Judson's cavernous space, smiling with my whole body, I welcomed an audience I adored to _Movement Research at...
Stats and Stories
“I’m in this building continuing the work.”
MRPJ: How did you get started at Judson? Can you describe your role there and the programs that you initiated? Aziza: I was dancing with David Rousseve. It was 1993...
Comments from Karen Sherman
I'm an atheist. A culturally Jewish atheist, completely opposed to organized religion. I always feel the need to say this whenever I am asked about Judson, where I worked for...
Judson Through a Camera
1 Early Guy Yarden Notes on Movement Research at the Judson Church and PJ3 '89/'90, Cathy was hired by Richard as Movement Research Managing Director. I was at P.S.122 and...
25 Propositions for “Position”
1. A position is never entirely still—like Paxton’s small dance, it has breath & shifts of weight. 2. A position requires aligning with a pre-arranged form. 3. A position should...
Holding Space for Multiplicity: Vanessa Anspaugh’s The End of Men
“I’m a feminist, I’m a woman, I was inviting these relational dynamics into the room. It feels problematic for me, moving forward in this moment, to be working exclusively with...
Lewis Family Forever
Movement Research Performance Journal: How was growing up in Sarasota, Florida? Ligia: Hated it! It was very difficult. George: We’ve all talked about how boring it was. We lived just...
All You Have to Do to Dance Is Dance. It’s that Simple: Stanley Love
ME: I have my own theories about what I think your work does. SL: To me, choreography ultimately is complicated. 'Cause there's dance, there's the theater, there's the process of...
Open Performance: Invitation and Practice
I am a visual artist who works primarily in photography and film, though have been interested in the body and movement since my first artistic investigations from behind a camera....