Spirited Affinities

How might we rethink the temporality of performance and the relations that sustain it, given its ongoing incorporation into art institutions, archives, markets and modes of global dissemination? In what ways does the ‘persistence of performance’ challenge our understandings of the material and immaterial, the secular and the spiritual? Looking at examples of recent trans-generational collaboration in contemporary art and dance, this talk reformulates the question of the material investments and affinities of performance artists. Performance’s historical survival is seen in the light of art’s re-attunement to planetary forces and to the powers of the unknown.

Adrian Heathfield is a writer and curator working across the scenes of live art, performance and dance. He is the author of Out of Now a monograph on the artist Tehching Hsieh and editor of Perform, Repeat, Record and Live: Art and Performance . He co-curated Live Culture (Tate Modern 2003) and the creative research project Performance Matters (2009-14). He was a curatorial attaché for the Sydney Biennale 2016 and, as part of the freethought collective, was a co-director of the Bergen Assembly 2016. He has curated the Taiwan Pavilion at the 57 ^th Venice Biennale 2017. Heathfield is Professor of Performance and Visual Culture at the University of Roehampton, London. www.adrianheathfield.net