Roselee Goldberg Reflects on 20 Years of Performa

Earlier this month, Performa, the art organization and biennial dedicated to performance art and founded by Roselee Goldberg, celebrated its 20th anniversary. Even in a season marked by a flurry of fancy-dress benefit parties, Performa’s characteristically stood out. The night began with a revival of Elmgreen & Dragset’s 2010 Paparazzi commission, where frenzied—and fake—photographers appeared to snap away at guests in a cacophony of shrieks and camera flashes. Even before entering the WSA building where the gala was held, guests had crossed Performa’s threshold. 

From there, a star-studded roster of Performa alumni (and potential future collaborators) turned out on the final Friday night before election day and the kickoff of Paris Photo, toasting the organization that has, over the past 20 years, almost single handedly molded the role of performance art in the city’s arts ecosystem. Shirin Neshat opened the evening, crediting her work with Goldberg and the 2009 Performa Biennial with making possible her 2025 commission to stage Aida at the Paris Opera House. Later Tyler Mitchell took the stage, expressing his wonder at being asked to introduce honoree Paul Pfeiffer, whom he welcomed as “Your favorite artist’s favorite artist.” 

Such is the power of Performa. In a city so brow-beaten by the art world’s brazen commerciality, Goldberg and her team of curators, producers, researchers, and assistants pull off the monumental feat of continuously imbuing its spectators and participants with wide-eyed wonder. 

In an interview with Surface, Goldberg reflects on the liberating power of live performance, documenting the ephemeral, and Performa’s outlook for its next 20 years. This discussion has been edited for clarity.

Performa works with some of the most exciting, established visual artists of their time. How does the organization set them up for success in the face of such an ephemeral medium?

At first, the artists we commission don’t quite know where to begin, but we coax images and ideas from them, meeting about every four or five weeks to discuss their latest proposals. Our producers get involved with the conversation early on, interpreting, making suggestions, and providing the artists with all sorts of tools they might need. We study early performances from art history, Performa’s history, examples from film or video, and we push the artists to be more ambitious than they would ever be on their own. For many, it is their first experience working live, which can be quite daunting, but in the end, each has described the process of ‘going live’ as being utterly liberating and consequential to their careers.

How do you and your team of curators keep your perspectives fresh? 

Performa is an incredibly flexible organization. We watch the changing dynamics of art and politics and economic and social shifts like a lighthouse beam: constantly surveying the changing weather on a minute-by-minute basis.  This is how we stay fresh. We analyze and interpret history on a daily basis, and every person on the team (curators, producers, researchers, assistants) is asked to creatively respond to the changing of the light. We work closely with Performa artists, responding to their entirely different sensibilities and intentions. Each day is unexpected and different.  

You said last year that you don’t really use social media. Is that still true?  

When I made that comment, I was referring to my personal use of social media, not Performa’s. Now, as we approach our forthcoming anniversary season, I see things differently. We will be using social media more systematically with the intention of reaching a larger public. As the resident historian, I am always hoping we might also include inspiring background stories from art history into daily conversations about art and culture, in the process creating a signature style that takes the medium to its highest level. 

From the start, whether in book form or in images, I have been obsessed with documenting performance in a way that would make the material as vivid, inspiring, and complex as when it was live. This is the underlying drive of our Performa Archive, which is available online, and that includes more than 800 projects and more 1,100 artists. It spans all past 10 Performa Biennials, as well as publications, public education projects, and documentation of traveling exhibitions. The goal of the archives is to build knowledge and appreciation of performance through a memory bank of comparative images, ideas, and exhibitions that convey the importance of this material in an art historical and larger cultural context.

As performance and interdisciplinary art becomes more omnipresent, how do you imagine Performa’s evolution in the city’s arts ecosystem over its next 20 years?

During our first 20 years we have built a highly varied and ever-expanding ecosystem for live performance, extending way beyond visual art to include contemporary dance, film, architecture, graphic design, new music, and more. In this way, we have become essential to the arts ecosystem of New York. [We are] looked to for our original thinking, the heft of our knowledge of performance history, and our expertise as producers. We are known for helping artists realize visionary work beyond their wildest dreams and imaginations. I have no doubt that we will be protecting that ecosystem for years to come, providing an exciting overview of the past and indicating new directions for the future.