Curated by Rolando Peña
Co-curated by Kyoko Sato and Juan Puntes
November 1 – 22, 2019

SCHEDULE OF PERFORMANCES

Wednesday/November 06, 7pm,LESS IS MORE : HOMAGE TO JOHN CAGE 
Wednesday/November 13, 7pm,SELFDOM, A Masked Project to DanceBy
Saturday /November 16, 7pm,FOURTH CHARACTER (QUARTO PERSONAGGIO)
Wednesday/November 20, 7pm,BLACK HOLE

PERFORMA19 , the international New York City Biennial of Live Performance Art will present Performa19 in its eighth edition. Taking place over a period of three weeks, from November 1–24, 2019 at locations throughout New York City, Performa19 once again celebrates the extraordinary vitality, inventiveness and significance of New York as a leading global performance capital of the world.

WHITEBOX HARLEM , in its eighth participating iteration and in line with its established tradition of ‘3 artists, 3 weeks’ plus a master ‘grand finale’, plans to present ‘Foundation for the Totality in Less is More (From Weimar to Taipei) Rolando Peña Art as a Political Weapon’, three gregarious performance works by three curated seminal performance artists—under the theme suggested by Rolando Peña —each celebrating the Bauhaus epistemology in its centenary. A baptismal approach to welcome WhiteBox to its new East Harlem quarters—a historical 1903 Fire House—where Rolando Peña, Chin Chih Yang and the pair Roland Gebhardt and Mercedes Searer, will present their three performance projects a week each, culminating with a grand finale performance, FOURTH CHARACTER (QUARTO PERSONAGGIO) choreographed by maestro Luca Veggetti.

Rolando Peña Art as a Political Weapon

Rolando Peña’s “Foundation for the Totality” (FFT), a project for WhiteBox Harlem historical Seminal Artist Series introducing the radical ideas of his mid-century collective group of South American immigrant artists under his leadership in New York City subverting rules of social, political and otherwise invading the puritanical fields (viewers) of the world with Love and Liberty, was used as the guide for his updated contemporary avant-garde relational project ‘FFT in Less is More / From Weimar to Taipei” (F-LIM), an homage to Peña’s long debt to the Bauhaus School Socialized tenets. F-LIM emulates the activist essence found in the original FFT project; then and now, and again, giving agency to a group of active, cutting-edge emigrè artists of Peña’s choice in pursuit of finding the pernicious social and political aspects still lingering in our progressive NYC 21st Century midst, while ‘rethinking’ and tearing down the still Eurocentric New York artscene of today and its remaining, taciturn single-minded prevailing attitudes in terms of race/ethnicity relations. At the suggestion of Mr Peña’s, this project was pitched to, welcomed by and incorporated into the prestigious NYC Biennial of Visual Performance Art, PERFORMA19, whereby the biennale would become the ‘conduit’ for the project to reach a broader base audience, the venue’s East Harlem local communities paired to guests coming from elsewhere, able to meet up and share the live experiences in-situ. Under the title “FFT in Less is More / From Weimar to Taipei”, the collective group exhibition and four performances will feature Peña’s singular Opus ‘Less is More” performed back to back to, and tête-a-tête with Roland Gebhardt’s—one of Peña’s 1960s South American generational emigrè cohorts— “SELFDOM-A masked Project to Dance By”. To that, the project will present two younger NYC émigré performers similar to the original FFT artists, in age and acumen; Chin Chi Yang, and Luca Veggetti, both part of the FFT ‘lineage’ will use multifarious styles ranging from the Existentialist to Pop formats, echoing Peña’s mixture of political discipline and satire, working in all media, their work aiming to subvert all ruleS, SOCIAL, POLITICAL AND OTHERWISE and invade the public with LOVE and LIBERTY…In “FFT in Less is More-From Weimar to Taipei” the project shares FFT’s antecedents doubling up as an homage—half a century apart—to Peña’s mentor, Conceptual art guru John Cage’s influential, radical performative ideas and tenets not entirely devoid of a deep sense of humor incorporated in Peña’s overall oeuvre and curatorials, a tool helping balance the subversive socio-cultural approach offered to WBXH’s audience as ammunition in the dynamic yet underserved East Harlem terrain. Mr Peña’s intent has been to inspire a new generation of Latinx, Hispanic and other akin local immigrant citizenry to consider adapting this group’s radical creative attitude and approach to address and deal with the tumultuous world of today in a world, sadly, little changed mid-century down the road. The performances and hands-on workshops will enrich local audiences and make community members, young and old, creators and commoners alike, feeling a sense of commonality and pride with this trendsetting artist proposing using art as a political weapon.

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ROLANDO PEÑA LESS IS MORE : HOMAGE TO JOHN CAGE
LIVE PERFORMANCE Wednesday, November 6, 7pm

Venezuelan born, Miami based Mr. Peña is a celebrated historical artist in the realm of performance art. Arriving in New York city in 1963 to join the Martha Graham dance company, Mr Peña soon became part of Andy Warhol’s Factory circle acting roles in the latter’s films as “The Black Prince”. Peña was a pioneer in Multimedia-Psychedelics, Happenings and Performance Art. In the Mid-1960s he established “The Foundation for the Totality”, including for the first time in history, a group of young, New York based Latin American Avant- Garde artists including Jaime Barrios and video/performance pioneer Juan Downey.

His project for PERFORMA19 at WhiteBox Harlem “LESS IS MORE”, is dedicated to his influential friend John Cage, a beacon of Bauhaus methodology in New York.

A phrase “Less is more” was adopted in 1947 by an architect Ludwig Mies van Der Rohe, the third principal (1930-1933) of the Bauhaus School. Peña will personally debut the sound/performance installation.

Live performance by Master musician and composer Jorge Heilpern.

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Roland Gebhardt and Mercedes Searer: SELFDOM (A Masked Project to Dance By)
LIVE PERFORMANCE Wednesday, November 13, 7pm

Minimalist sculptor Roland Gebhardt collaborates with dancer-performer Mercedes Searer presenting, during the second week of PERFORMA19 @ WhiteBox Harlem, Selfdom, a “Masked project in-process” related to identity responding to WhiteBox’s 1903 FireHouse minimal architectural qualities, injecting over it a “touch of Bauhaus” referencing in particular Oskar Schlemmer’s great work in mask making, a forte in the work of Mr. Gebhardt’s oeuvre.

Music: Kei Wada

ROLAND GEBHARDT 

Suriname born, New York based, Roland Gebhardt is an internationally known sculptor whose work has been shown around the world, and is in many prominent collections. He studied at the Art Academy of Hamburg and the Kunstgewerbeschule in Zurich. He is perhaps best known for his monolithic sculptures which explore the concept of the linear void. Some of these explorations were executed as large scale environmental sculptures (such as those shown at Wave Hill and Storm King Art Center in New York). Other explorations utilized “host volumes” as diverse as natural boulders, and fruit and vegetables. The latter were the subject of a series of 8 one-day exhibits at the Kunstmuseum, Duesseldorf in 1982.

In 2005, Roland began the development of series of masks in an exploration of individual and group identity. Collaborating with artists from a variety of disciplines, this exploration culminated in the production of a multi-media performance piece which made its world premiere at the 3LD Art & Technology Center in New York City in December, 2008. “The Only Tribe” received widespread press coverage, and elicited positive responses from audiences during its seven-week residence at 3LD.

“Sculpture Dance” also spoked to issues group and individual identity, using sculptural masks presented by dancers in open-air settings. In 2013, these experiments at Storm King Art Center, and on the grounds of the Chautauqua Institution, demonstrated spatial relationships embedded in the intersection of identity, abstract sculpture, and landscape.

“Trophies” was a unique collaboration between sculpture, dance, and music that explores issues of identity and transformation from living being to hunter’s trophy. The piece premiered in February 2014 at the Erie Art Museum in Erie, Pennsylvania.

Roland continues to develop conceptual sculpture in various formats, addressing issues of identity

Mercedes Searer

The Dancer / Choreographer Mercedes Searer is a Brooklyn based dancer and choreographer. Mercedes makes things. Pots, and plates, dances, collages, and quote books. As a maker she is interested in the kinetic energy of the object; its rhythm, its illusion to meaning, and the metaphors it presents for life itself. In all of her work, asymmetry, the verge of collapse, humor, irony, and pain show up repeatedly. Since arriving in New York in 2009 Mercedes has worked for such greats as Elizabeth Streb, Sara Rudner, Twyla Tharp, Steve Paxton, and Kathy Westwater, among others. She is currently working on three projects, “Standing on Their Glittering Mirrors” with Sonia Lopes Soares, “Stand by Your Plan” with Macklin Kowal and “ˌRēkənˈteks(t)SH(əw)əˌlīz/,” a collaboration with visual artist Bibiana Medkova. Mercedes trains with her mentor, renowned ballet teacher Janet Panetta. Mercedes’ artistic practice centers on assumptions around identity. She seeks to invest in the notion that bodies are perpetually engaged in processes of biological, social, and cultural performance.

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Luca Veggetti : FOURTH CHARACTER (QUARTO PERSONAGGIO)
LIVE PERFORMANCE, Saturday, November 16, 7pm

https://www.facebook.com/whiteboxny/videos/418107688868283/

Fourth Character Performance

A performance conceived and choreographed by Luca Veggetti

Puppet creation: Moe Yoshida

Music: Paolo Aralla (Nothing for tape)

Dancer/Puppeteer: Morgan Hurst

Dancers: Noelle Hauptmann-Anderson, Dorren Moglii Smith

The performance explores the expressive possibilities offered by a particular poetic universe: a microcosm comprised of an ever-shifting architecture made of long wooden bars, encompassing the action of a dancer-manipulated rod puppet.
It is a constructed and dangerous world whose dramatic tension can serve as a metaphor for human condition.
The title Fourth Character refers to the actual puppet: an Everyman of sort, a fourth and therefore generic character conjuring through its presence and movements an ephemeral collective identity
-Luca Veggetti

Special thanks to Roland Gebhardt.

Luca Veggetti – choreographer/stage director

Born in Bologna, Italy in 1963 and trained at La Scala in Milan, Veggetti began his career as a choreographer and stage director in 1990. Turning his interests toward contemporary music, experimental forms, and new technologies, he has collaborated with some of today’s most important ensembles and composers including Toshio Hosokawa and Kaija Saariaho. Veggetti’s work has been produced and presented by leading theaters, companies, and museums around the world including The Drawing Center, Works & Process at the Guggenheim, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, La Cité de la Musique in Paris and the Suntory Hall in Tokyo. Notable productions include Iannis Xenakis’ Oresteia at the Miller Theater in co-production with the Guggenheim’s Works & Process, 2008, Kaija Saariaho’s Maa at La Cite’ de la Musique in Paris, 2013, a series of creations for the Martha Graham Dance Company, NOTATIONOTATIONS for the Drawing Center in collaboration with
artist Susan Hefuna, 2013, the world premiere of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Vivo e Coscienza at Mittelfest in Italy, 2013, Toshio Hosokawa’s operas Hanjo at Tokyo’s Suntory Hall, 2009,  The Raven for the first New York Philharmonic Biennial, 2014, Vision of Lear in Hiroshima, 2015, Kaija Saariaho’s operatic work The Tempest Songbook at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2015, the performance/video installation Scenario conceived for the spaces of MART in Italy, 2016. Recent productions include Left-Right-Left, a co-production by the Japan Society in New York and the Yokohama Noh Theater, 2017, Iannis Xenakis; Kraanerg for the Teatro Comunale in Bologna, 2018, Watermill, a new vision of Jerome Robbins; iconic theater piece for the Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, 2018, Tanto quanto dura il soffio: per Bruno Munari a choreographic installation for the
Setagaya Art Museum in Tokyo, 2018, Am ende unser schatten, a creation on Arnold Schoenberg’s Pelleas and Melisande for the Staatstheater in Oldenburg, 2019.

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Chin Chih Yang:  BLACK HOLE
LIVE PERFORMANCE, Wednesday, November 20, 7pm

The Concept underlying this installation is the overcoming of scarcity. For too long people have been at war with each other. In the modern world since the 19th century, our technologies have too easily lend themselves to destruction as opposed to creation, to war instead of leisure. In light of recent news about the actual existence of black holes. I propose making a small black-hole replica within an exhibition space setting surrounded by  aring of actual fire. The air of danger, of fun, of a kind of sci-fi unreality will invite audience-participants to enter into the circle. As the circle is limited in size, people will have to fight over who gets to enter. Boxing gloves will be placed around the encouraging viewer-participants to box each other, commenting upon human behavioral absurdity in the face the unknown cosmos .

Multidisciplinary artist Chin Chih Yang was born in Taiwan, and has resided for many years in New York City. Where he studied at Pratt Institute and Parsons School of Design. Among other honors, he has been a recipient of the Urban Artist Initiative Fellowship, a fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts, a fellowship from the Franklin Furnace, and a fellowship from the New York State Council for the Arts, and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council has granted him a Swing Space residency at Governors Island. An experienced multidisciplinary artist, his interests in ecology and constructed environments have resulted in interactive performances and installations that have been exhibited nationally and internationally; in the United States, Poland, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong, he has exhibited/performed in such spaces as: the Rockefeller Center, the United Nations, the Union Square Park, the Chelsea Museum, Queens Museum, the Godwin-Ternbach Museum, Exit Art, and Flux Factory and Taipei Art Fair, to name only a few.His work uniquely incorporates the actual rhythms and discords of human society, exhibiting them in terms of the waste materials wantonly discarded by industrialized production. Finding the modern world both disturbing and entrancing, he aims in his work to capture the complex state of anxiety and compulsive-fascination specific to the contemplation of contemporary social problems. His performances often dramatize the divided quality of the self, and he use video projections to create a discordant ambience specific to the themes of his performances.