Alex Sloane

Photo by Carlos Vela Prado and Courtesy of MOCA

Alex Sloane is the Associate Curator of Performance and Programs at The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA). Recent projects include the Los Angeles presentation of the awardwinning opera-performance Sun & Sea by Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė, Vaiva Grainytė, and Lina Lapelytė; Carl Craig's site-specific installation, Party/After-Party; and an upcoming exhibition with artist Simone Forti. Prior to joining MOCA in 2021, she was the Assistant Curator at MoMA PS1 in New York City, where she co-organized the performance series, Sunday Sessions, with an emphasis on commissioning new work and establishing a residency series. Projects featured new work by artists working across sound, dance, performance, theater, and environmental installation, including Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste, Moriah Evans, NIC Kay, Leslie Cuyjet, and Jonathan Gonzalez. She has worked on exhibitions including Retrospective by Xavier Le Roy (2014); Anne Imhof, DEAL (2015); Greater New York (2015); Rockaway! Katharina Grosse (2016); and Rockaway! Yayoi Kusama's Narcissus Garden (2018).

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. It took place in October 2021.

GM: What was your path to becoming a curator, as well as your current job at MOCA?

AS: I originally came to New York in 2009. I had been in art school in Paris and transferred to Parsons in New York, and I graduated from there. While I was in school, I worked a lot with performance. Following graduation, I got a grant from Franklin Furnace Archive, along with three friends who were fellow artists, and we opened our own space called 1:1 on Essex Street in the Lower East Side. We had funding for a year to do a range of different types of programming; we did have some exhibitions, but we also did a lot of performances and residencies, including these big performative dinners that featured pre-arranged and impromptu performances, poetry readings, and music. Through that, I decided that I really wanted to be more actively involved in programming; I saw that as my work rather than creating my own work. [I wanted to] create the space for artists to present and bring together an eclectic and diverse mix of programming. That was when I got an internship at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in the Department of Media and Performance Art, where I met my future boss, Jenny Schlenzka, who was just moving to MoMA PS1 in Long Island City. She hired me to come with her to help organize and run the performance program that PS1 was initiating at the time. It was called Sunday Sessions and was in this geodesic dome. I had a fellowship originally, which then progressed to a full-time position. When Jenny ultimately left PS1, my colleague Taja Cheek, who leads both the Warm Up program and Sunday Sessions, and I took over the mantle of all the programming there for three years. After being at PS1 for 8 years, I left in 2020. Klaus Biesenbach, who I knew well from when he was Director of PS1, had invited me to MOCA. The pandemic affected the timing, but I was eventually able to come in April of this year as Associate Curator of Performance and Programs.

GM: What types of programming do you hope to bring to MOCA?

AS: What excited me about MOCA was that it has a long history of supporting performance, but I’m eager to implement a program that can create a beat and a sustained community and audience, not just for artists but also for visitors. [I want] MOCA to become a place where people want to see what’s going on and what’s happening here, whether that’s through residencies, commissions, etc. Everything is in infancy at the moment, but the Warehouse space at The Geffen Contemporary in Little Tokyo has nothing but potential. It’s exciting to think about creating a cocktail of different types of programming. On November 19 and 20, we are co-presenting the U.S. premiere of HIVE RISE with The Industry, a Los Angeles based arts organization focused on experimental opera. HIVE RISE premiered at Berghain in Berlin and is co-created by Ash Fure, composition and musical direction, and LILLETH, direction and choreography. (Continued)

The performance features a diverse cast of performers and creators from the LA area, including Jay Carlon, Rayne Raney, and Jasmine Nyende, the lead singer of the band Fuck U Pay Us. This will be a whole mix of different practices – punk bands, opera singers, classically trained theatre, and movement artists. I am enthusiastic to collaborate and share resources with fellow art organizations in the city to bring exciting projects to LA. In December, we’re working with BlackStar, a film collective based out of Philadelphia, to screen a series of short films by Black, Brown, and Indigenous filmmakers in the LA area. A lot of the filmmakers will be able to be on site and participate in the panel, “Mothering and Laboring the Cinematic Revolution. ” I also have a lot of hopes for artist residencies at MOCA; I think they are an amazing opportunity for the museum to really support the creation and workshopping of new work, not just the presentation of existing work or the final product.

GM: Can you discuss your experience organizing “Sun & Sea” (2021) for The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA?

AS: It was a new experience in that I’ ve never collaborated so closely with so many other institutions to make a project happen. It was three organizations – MOCA in collaboration with CAP UCLA and The Hammer Museum – coming together and pulling their resources to make it happen. Because I’m new to LA, it was great to meet a lot of colleagues in other institutions and develop those relationships. Touring a large international piece with a cast and crew of over 29 people, during a pandemic, is a challenge. (Laughs) It’s definitely not something that I’ ve experienced before, and we made sure that everyone had all their [COVID] tests and everything. It was one of those things where there’s a lot of phone calls, organization, and coordination in advance, but once everyone gets here, it all comes into focus. (Continued)

Installation view of Sun & Sea, October 14 –October 16, 2021 at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA. Courtesy of The Museum of Contemporary Art. Photo by Elon Schoenholz.

It was an exceptionally special project to be a part of because it’s so timely. We are living in a climate crisis, and this is a work that really speaks to the apathy of humanity in the face of said crisis. It really drives home the idea of how the planet is warming up and species are dying, but let’s just sit on the beach for another hour and have a drink because it’s all going to be fine. Hopefully people will be spurned to action after seeing it; we put together a packet of different resources so that people can take what they ’ ve seen and translate it into something more. The three artists, Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė, Vaiva Grainytė, and Lina Lapelytė, are unusual for an opera because they are a trinity of creative directors. It was also fantastic to work with an all-female team who are really pushing this work forward, and to see how this work that made such strides at the 2019 Venice Biennale can now be seen by a broader audience around the world.

GM: Can you discuss your current experience co-curating (with Rebecca Lowery) Simone Forti’s retrospective for MOCA, which will premiere in 2022?

AS: It’s definitely a crossover, as this exhibition will include performance, documentation, sculpture, and drawings from across Simone Forti’s 40-year career. For me, it’s been fantastic to work with Simone; she’s someone who I’ ve admired for many years. Simone is such a pioneer and has such strong opinions of her work, so it’s great to have a dialogue with her and Mara McCarthy, the founder of The Box, which represents Simone. Working closely with Rebecca is critical because this is going to be Simone’s first museum show on the West Coast, and we want to make sure we do Simone and her work justice. After her family fled fascism in Italy in the 1930’s, California is where they landed and made their home. The West Coast has remained a strong influence throughout her career. (Continued)

Simone Forti, Phoenix, Circling I/II, Huddle, Garden, Fountain Huddle, Projects: Performance, Summergarden series, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, August 18-19, 1978. Performed by Simone Forti, Peter Van Riper (music) and others. Photo by Peter Moore, © (1978) Barbara Moore, all rights of reproduction reserved.

For me, it’s been particularly interesting to learn about the extent of her collaborations across decades, not just the sixties, but through the present day. She’s still actively collaborating, writing, and working with people much younger than her. It’s been fantastic to see how this intergenerational network of fellow artists and peers continues to inspire her today. […] I will say that our show is not a retrospective, but will encompass a large number of her bodies of work. It’s great that MoMA acquired Simone’s “Dance Constructions” (1960-61) to give greater credibility to this series, and acknowledge that Simone has had such an impact on contemporary dance and the future trajectory of dance within the visual arts context. Simone always refers to herself as an artist, not as just a dancer or choreographer. Being an artist can encapsulate so many different aspects -- she’s also a writer, musician, sculptor, and drawer. That’s what I hope that this show will be able to demonstrate to a Los Angeles audience, that while she is most well known as a dancer and choreographer, she is an artist and the scope of her work is remarkable.

GM: Do you believe that art institutions embrace performance art in terms of exhibition and programming thematics?

AS: Performance and live programming in museums is becoming much more common because it’s an intrinsic part of contemporary practice and what artists are using today. [But] the museum is not a theatre, and there are things that museums don’t have the capabilities of doing, such as having a sprung floor for a dancer or altering the climate-controlled galleries. Museums were made to accommodate objects, and I see myself as [wanting to] integrate movement and bodies into museums. There are many projects and pieces that [could] really work in a museum, but you want to give the piece the best context. I get really excited about performance in relation to visual art objects, and I enjoy doing that when it’s possible. […] There’s this opportunity of inviting people who wouldn’t necessarily see themselves in a gallery exhibition, but whose work is just as important. Programming can bring those artists and communities into the museum, and by extension, their supporters. I have a long history of working with sex workers and their allies in New York. We organized two large programs, The Sex Worker Festival of Resistance, in collaboration with Arika, and Kink Out: SPACES with the collective Kink Out, and I hope to continue this dialogue and engagement in LA. [The museum should] be a space for conversation, different types of programming, and welcome people across a diverse arrange of interests.

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