Space + Performance

Mother Courage (1974), The Performance Group at The Performance Garage

"The fullness of space, the endless ways space can be transformed, articulated, animated - that is the basis of environmental theater design. It is also the source of environmental theater performer training. If the audience is one medium in which performance takes place, the living space is another."

Supersurface-Life (1972), Superstudio

“It is an image of humanity wandering, playing, sleeping, etc., on this platform. Naked humanity, walking along the highway with banners, magic objects, archaeological objects, in fancy dress ...”

Small Skyscraper (1991-2001), Chris Burden

What My Dad Gave Me (2008), Chris Burden

"He said he saw his engineering pieces as part of the same tradition. “These are structures that are performing themselves in their forms,” he said. But by 1975 he had turned away from body-based performance, in part because of the kind of attention it was attracting.

“It became very misunderstood,” he said. “I wasn’t doing it to be some kind of stuntman.” (He said he bore no physical infirmities from those years; one of his worst injuries came only a few years ago when he wrestled a coyote to the ground after it latched onto his dog. The coyote then latched onto his left hand and almost tore off part of a finger.)"

Cinerama Dome, Hollywood (1993), Hiroshi Sugimoto's Theaters

 "I'm a habitual self-interlocutor. Around the time I started photographing at the Natural History Museum, one evening I had a near-hallucinatory vision. The question-and- answer session that led up to this vision went something like this: Suppose you shoot a whole movie in a single frame? And the answer: You get a shining screen. Immediately I sprang into action, experimenting toward realizing this vision. Dressed up as a tourist, I walked into a cheap cinema in the East Village with a large-format camera. As soon as  the movie finished, I clicked the shutter closed. That evening, I developed the film, and the vision exploded behind my eyes."

Empty Stages (2003 - present), Hugo Glendinning & Tim Etchells