International Performance Art Festival

Garage Center for Contemporary Culture is showcasing Russian and international performance artists inMoscow's first International Performance Art Festival curated by Klaus Biesenbach, Director of MoMA PS1 and a Chief Curator at Large at The Museum of Modern Art, and RoseLee Goldberg, Director and Curator of Performa in New York. The Performance Festival – which is part of the 100 Years of Performance exhibition – will contextualise the exhibition's archival and documentary materials by creating an exciting temporary space for live performance and offering visitors the chance to watch, experience and interact with some of the most inspiring performance artists from around the world as they create never-seen-before works in Moscow.

The festival will showcase the extraordinary diversity of performance art, as over 10 artists will present work that spans an enormous variety of working practices which challenge the Garage audience to engage in different ways. The festival opens with Moscow based artist Liza Morozova performing An Attempt to Escape Glamour, in which visitors will be genuinely welcomed to Garage's space by predictably beautiful Russian models with a warmhearted embrace.

New York based artists Kalup Linzy, Rashaad Newsome, Ryan McNamara and Aki Sasamoto will also perform during the festival. Linzy will take on his alter-ego Taiwan to play Sweet, Sampled and LeftOva with a live jazz band, while Newsome will combine music and live video-mixing in his Shade Compositions, in which female performers enact musical gestures as the artist conducts and mixes the sound with a hacked Nintendo® Wii™ game controller. McNamara will perform Hallways where he draws on the history of contemporary performance artists such as Bruce Nauman, Marina Abramović, and Graciela Carnevale. And Aki Sasamoto's Beauty Line will explore the flow of blood, sweat and alcohol through a performance of routines.

Acclaimed Russian artists Elena Kovylina, German Vinogradov, Andrei Kuzkin, Fyodor Pavlov-Andreevich, The MishMash Group and The Blue Noses will be inviting visitors to interact with their own performances. Elena Kovylina will stage a beautiful tea party Would you like a cup of coffee? in which the artist will invite visitors to join her, decorating tarts and pastries before setting the table cloth a blaze. The Blue Noses reassess the history of performance with 100 Years of Performance in 15 minutes. Andrei Kuzkin will take on the role of a computer character as he wears digital glasses that allow visitors to remote control operate his movements in his performance You are alive – I am alive. Fyodor Pavlov-Andreevich will be moving around the space of the Garage, interacting with visitors and asking them questions whilst playing his simple game, Egobox. And the MishMash Group will assemble a sculpture collection by molding visitors signed prayers and wishes into a gigantic panel in their Volume of Desires and Various Types of Voids.

Garage has also invited all the performing artists within the festival to give talks about their work to spark discussion about performance art today. The series of talks will bring a new relevance and perspective to the rich heritage of this genre which is explored within 100 Years of Performance exhibition. As 100 Years is not a static or closed archive; it evolves and expands in new directions each time it is presented in a different space and a new location. The curators have encouraged Garage visitors to contribute memories, thoughts and performance material of their own which will become part of this important overview as it travels all over the world. As a result, the new Moscow additions will include established Russian artists Oleg Kulik; The Radek Group; The Blue Noses and Elena Kovylina all of whom are displayed within the exhibition to mark the completion of Version #3, Moscow, June 2010.

International Performance Art Festival
10 days, 10 artists, 10 performances

Künstler: Liza Morozova, Kalup Linzy, Rashaad Newsome, Ryan McNamara, Aki Sasamoto, Elena Kovylina, German Vinogradov, Andrey Kuzkin, Fyodor Pavlov-Andreevich, MishMash Project , The Blue Noses Group