“Most Futurist films were destroyed, either they burned them or they were destroyed during the war,” explained Lana Wilson, Performa’s publication and publicity director. “The films showed things like how the Futurist walks, as opposed to the ‘passive neutralist.’
Despite all of their problems, like fascism and misogyny, they could do some things really well, like multimedia work and engaging the senses.”
It is, in short, a month to live in the future of the past.The Futurist vision included works in theater, film, happenings, visual and sound arts—even cooking. In February, Performa celebrated the actual anniversary of the Manifesto’s publication with a dinner of absurdist food for 200 guests, all made from The Futurist Cookbook.
The next few weeks include a staggering lineup of artists. Musicians Ulrich Krieger, Alan Licht, Christian Marclay and Lee Ranaldo will accompany a screening of the 1927 film Berlin: Symphony of a Great City at the High Line Park 14th Street overpass. French choreographer Anne Collod will restage Anna Halprin’s 1965 work “Parades & Changes.” Polish artist Christian Tomaszewsk borrows from Soviet visions of the future for his enormous cosmonaut spacesuit, which will house a fashion show featuring classic and newly designed spacewear. Liz Mogel will lead a walking tour that melds urban geography and street theater into a vision of New York’s future.Artist and musician Mike Kelley will present three short dance pieces based on his 2005 video installation Day is Done, which in turn was based on high school yearbook photos of extracurricular activities. Kelly is also curating a night of “noise music” with pieces by John Cage, Rhys Chatham, Fred Frith, Bruce Nauman, Yoko Ono, Karlheinz Stockhausen and John Zorn. And No Waver cum Brasilia producer Arto Lindsay will open the month with an “art parade” in Times Square.
“Arto has been doing these Rio-styled carnival parades with dancers, artists and musicians,” Turner said. “He did it at the Viennese biennial. He has a piece composed for us for cell phone mp3 players.”
But the most exciting of the many events is Music for 16 Futurist Noise Intoners, a Town Hall concert of original scores and new commissions for the intonarumori, a sort of din-producing hurdy-gurdy invented by Luigi Russolo in 1913. Einstuezende Neubauten frontman Blixa Bargeld, minimalist saxophonist John Butcher, drone pioneer Pauline Oliveros, avant rock vocalist Mike Patton, downtown guitarist Elliott Sharp and violin experimenter Tony Conrad take the stage Nov. 12 to respond to the replicas of these early sound machines, constructed by composer and musicologist Luciano Chessa.
“This is the very first reconstruction of Russolo’s first intonarumori ensemble of 16 instruments,” Chessa said. “A great deal of the instruments included have never been reconstructed before, among them the scoppiatori, the gorgogliatori and the sibilatore.When Performa commissioned me to reconstruct these instruments, I immediately pictured the intonarumori on a stage, in performance mode. Never in this process did I divorce the historical reconstruction project, with its obvious need for historical accuracy, from the performance project.”
In truth, only about a third of the events are Futurist related, although savvy attendees can enjoy playing dot-to-dot dogma by forcefitting doctrine onto different dates.The future, after all, is unwritten.
> Performa 09
Through Nov. 22, various locations. For a complete schedule, visit performa-arts.org.
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