Now available: In Terms of Performance

A new, free, web-based publication on cultural practice is now available. In Terms of Performance is a keywords anthology designed to provoke discovery and generate shared literacies across disciplines. It features essays and interviews from more than 50 prominent artists, curators, presenters, and scholars who reflect on common yet contested terms in contemporary cultural practice.

Sharing perspectives from distinct points of departure, contributors include Janine Antoni, Philip Bither, Sabine Breitwieser, Simon Dove, Malik Gaines, RoseLee Goldberg, Jens Hoffmann, Ralph Lemon, Ralph Rugoff, Catherine Wood, and others who reflect on terms such as Curating, Choreography, Duration, Live, Participation, Score, and Spectator. In their entries, the authors contemplate the relations among visual art, theatrical, choreographic, and performance art practices; the poetry of miscommunication; and the stakes of literacy in our current context of progressively hybrid cultural production.

The publication is produced by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, Philadelphia and the Arts Research Center, University of California, Berkeley and co-edited by Shannon Jackson, director of the Arts Research Center, and Paula Marincola, executive director of the Pew Center. A conversation between the co-editors describes the genesis of this project, and the editors’ aim to cultivate dialogue and invite repeated exploration across disciplinary boundaries. “The impulse underlying this project is a generative one, and can be applied to so many kinds of cultural practice. It’s really a reflection of how much is at stake in the language we use around any practice, cultural or non,” says Marincola.

“Turning to this keyword strategy is also an attempt to understand a complex and rich field by seeing how the uses and vocabularies change not only over time, diachronically, but also synchronically, among the different domains in which the same keywords emerge,” explains Jackson.

As a free online resource, In Terms of Performance is non-linear and richly cross-listed, enabling an unstructured browsing experience in which terms, contributors, and artworks connect intricately in a true web of reference—while inviting new entries to be added in the future. It also allows users to create their own PDF publications, customized to their interests.

The anthology is augmented by a series of extended interviews with leading figures in art and performance, including Tim Griffin of the Kitchen, New York; MoMA’s Kathy Halbreich; choreographer and curator Ishmael Houston-Jones; artist William Kentridge; experimental playwright Young Jean Lee; and dancer and choreographer Yvonne Rainer.

Explore the free publication at intermsofperformance.site and join the conversation on social media using #InTermsOfPerformance.