DEVELOPING A CURATORIAL PRACTICE IN PERFORMANCE

Dwight Currie, Curator of Performance

The genesis of The Ringling’s performance programming owes much to the extraordinary professionals who came together at Wesleyan University to create the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance (ICPP). Under their inspired leadership and direction, artists, curators, and scholars from across the US, Europe, and Asia first gathered in 2011-2012 to articulate and explore innovative curatorial approaches to presenting time-based art.

It was my good fortune to have participated in the Institute’s inaugural year, and it was during that time that much of New Stages 2014 was conceived and developed. Now, I am honored and proud to bring the leadership of ICPP to The Ringling for Genre Creates Ghetto / Conversations on Curating in a Post-Genre World. On Saturday, March 22, you, too, will have the opportunity to enrich your understanding of the artist-centered curatorial models that are being developed by the nation’s leading curators of contemporary performance.

Heading the delegation from ICPP is the program’s founder, Samuel A. Miller. In addition to his work at ICPP, Sam is the President of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and has also implemented a number of national programs including Leveraging Investments in Creativity, the National Dance Project, and the Center for Creative Research. Joining Sam from ICPP will be Pamela Tatge, Managing Director of the Institute and the recipient of the William Dawson Award for Programmatic Excellence for sustained leadership, innovation, and vision in program design, audience building, and community involvement efforts. Sam and Pam will share the dais with three of ICPP’s most highly regarded and sought-after curators.

Philip Bither has been Walker Art Center’s Senior Curator of Performing Arts since April 1997, overseeing one of the country’s leading contemporary performing arts programs. He has also served as Associate Director/Music Curator at Brooklyn Academy of Music and sits on numerous federal, state, local, and national foundation arts panels.

Judy Hussie-Taylor is the Director of New York’s Danspace Project where she implemented the series of PLATFORMS, wherein contexts for the presentation of dance are developed and catalogued. Judy also served as the Director of the Colorado Dance Festival and the Artistic Director for Performance Programs at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art.

Kristy Edmunds is a curator, artistic director, and consultant internationally recognized for innovation and depth in the presentation of works by contemporary artists. She was the Artistic Director for the Melbourne International Arts Festival from 2005 – 2008, and went on to become the Consulting Artistic Director for the Park Avenue Armory in New York. She is now the Executive and Artistic Director of the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA, and is also generously giving of her time to serve The Ringling as my advisor for the further development of The Ringling International Arts Festival.

Fat Boy

Through June, Bayfront Gardens

In December, The Ringling hosted Brooklyn-based artist Leonard Ursachi as he installed a large styrocrete sculpture on our grounds. Titled Fat Boy, it is the latest in the artist’s series of “bunker” sculptures. As a Romanian-born American, Ursachi grew up under a dictatorship from which he defected in the early 1980s. For years, he has been creating sculptures in the form of bunkers, influenced by his time spent in Communist Romania where bunkers dotted the landscape. Some were remnants of the last war; many were built during the Cold War to instill fear—a government-sponsored bunker mentality.

For Fat Boy, Ursachi based its form on a classical Western putto. Since antiquity, putti have been malleable signifiers, representing, among other things, Eros, heaven, peace, and joy. Fat Boy’s title refers not only to his plump, cherubic face, but also to the names of the WWII atomic bombs, Little Boy and Fat Man. With its twin references to Eros and war, Fat Boy speaks to the complexities of desire and violence inherent in the formation and transformation of identity. Its installation on The Ringling grounds introduces interesting references to the sculpture that John Ringling acquired in the 1920s, including putti, dwarves, and Roman gods.

Fat Boy is located in the The Ringling’s Millennial Tree Park, and will be exhibited through June 2014.