Performance Talks

In this episode, I’m speaking with Jenny Schlenzka, Director of the Gropius Bau in Berlin. We talk about Jenny’s early years in New York, her time at the Museum of Modern Art as its first performance curator, what it means to program live work and performance in museum structures not designed for sound and movement, and questions of collecting and historicizing dance and performance. We also talk...

In this episode, I am joined by co-interviewer Dylan Sherman. We speak with performer Mickey Mahar, whose work has been central to performances by artists like Maria Hassabi, Anne Imhof, Ryan McNamara, and Pope. L. We talk about what it means to perform inside museum spaces and art fairs, how it feels to be endlessly photographed by strangers, and the often invisible labor involved in co-creating...

This episode of Performance Talks is a conversation with Philip Bither, Senior Curator of Performing Arts at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, who oversees one of the country's leading contemporary performing arts programs. In this conversation, he and I talk about the Walker’s long history with commissioning and presenting live work, the evolving relationship between performance and visual ar...

This episode of Performance Talks is a conversation with Beatrix Ruf, the Director of Hartwig Art Foundation, where she oversees the vision and realization of its new contemporary art museum in Amsterdam. In this conversation, we discuss the need to rethink the economy and infrastructure of museums to allow for performance and interdisciplinary experimentation, the specifics of how the cultural pr...

This episode of Performance Talks is a conversation with Rachel Helm and Rachel Churner from the Carolee Schneemann Foundation, recorded at Schneemann's home in upstate New York. In this conversation, We talk about the complexities of preserving the artist's home, a nearly 300 year old structure, as well as the intricacies of representing an artist who had such a strong presentation and idea of se...

This episode of Performance Talks is a conversation with the General Manager of Live Arts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Limor Tomer. Tomer earned both her B.A. and M.A. from The Juilliard School. For 10 years, she performed professionally as a classical pianist in solo and orchestral performances throughout the U.S. and Europe. While at The Met, Tomer expanded and branched out the...

For this episode of Performance Talks I had the pleasure to interview the New York-based curator and Co-Director of Centre Pompidou Jersey City, Charles Aubin. Aubin started his career at Centre Pompidou in Paris, served as Senior Curator and Head of Publications at Performa, and was recently hired as Co-Director of Centre Pompidou Jersey City (scheduled to open in 2026) in a full circle moment. W...

On September 29 at 99 Canal, writer and editor David Velasco and performer and producer Nile Harris , joined Jeanette Bisschops for a conversation on ' Sarah Michelson, ' the 2017 book edited by Velasco and published by MoMA as part of their Modern Dance series. They were joined by a crowd of performance devotees and, in a surprise appearance, Sarah herself. In the recorded discussion, the group t...

This first episode of Performance Talks is a conversation with writer and editor David Velasco He brought dance on to the pages of Art Forum during his six year stint as editor-in-chief at the magazine and was the editor of Modern Dance , a series of monographs on contemporary choreographers, published by MoMA. His writing on dance and performance is some of the best out there. In this conversatio...