Artists' Statement

IMPERMANENT COLLECTION is a personal and collective response to the interface of bodies and objects that make a museum.

The project attempts to bring attention to how “performance” is experienced in the context of a museum, specifically, the Whitney Museum of American Art. How does a permanent collection influence and contain the fundamental instability of live art? How do we perceive the art subject (a performer, for example) differently than the art object (a painting, for example)? How does performance re-map space and guide the experience of being in a museum?

Our first step is to visit the museum’s permanent collection. We begin with the most essential action of museum-going: to look. We ask each other, which work resonates with you? Which work provokes you? Each of us chooses this work as the focus of a rehearsal process in which we develop “solos” that respond to and interact with the artwork. We urge each other to move toward the fantastical and the imaginary (what would you do in the museum if no one else was around?) and also the personal and historical (what memories does this artwork incite?) In collaboration with filmmaker Brock Labrenz and An Films, we then develop short “film portraits” which capture each individual’s performative response to the artwork, shot on location at the museum. The camera is more than an abstract voyeur to this interaction; it partners with each performer to create a kind of dance on film.

On December 7th and 14th, we will “stage” these video portraits in a live performance which will take place in the museum’s Lower Gallery. The performers, now expanded to include seven musicians from the contemporary music ensemble ICE, will interact with the film portraits in a live/recorded performance hybrid. What happens in the transition from video to liveness and back again? What is gained; what is lost? And what are we doing in a museum, anyway?

Brennan Gerard | Ryan Kelly