Re/Visiting

Abstract

Theater 44 (2) “Performance Curators” (2014) and Theater 47 (1) “Curating Crisis” (2017): TURBA in conversation with special issue editors Bertie Ferdman and Tom Sellar (USA)TURBA: I’ve been wondering for some time why it took so long to develop a body of literature around performance curating. In the Global North in 2010, there had been two initial events that laid the grounds for a discourse in the field: the Croatian theater journal Frakcija 55 “Curating Performing Arts” and the conference in Essen, Germany, “Beyond Curating: Strategies of Knowledge Transfer in Dance, Performance, and Visual Arts.” It then took four years before your “Performance Curators” issue of Theater was published, and then another three years until “Curating Crisis.” The concept of the performance curator had been present for decades. So why did it take so long? Why did you, Tom, decide in 2014 that we needed a collection of essays and dialogues on this topic at that time?The Parma Manifesto (1968): Frederic Rzewski (USA)In times of emergency men find it possible to perform operations necessary to survival without bureaucracy, police, money, and the other obstacles which normally obstruct the way to efficient behavior. In such moments the organism, acted upon by forces beyond its control, is able to act, to respond to reality in an efficient manner. It is forced to move, to create space for itself, in order to survive. When confronted with the possibility of destruction, it discovers the alternative of creation.