Testing Stage - A Window to Performa New York

For its “Testing Stage” festival, the Hebbel am Ufer Theater (HAU) invited six fine artists to develop performances which were shown at all three HAU venues and several other locations in Berlin. The organizers believe that the radical figures of performance art of the 1960s and 1970s are now entering a phase of museum-like retrospection. Thanks to some major exhibitions, the actions of forty years ago became visible as a compact artistic legacy. In view of this legacy, a young generation of fine artists are attempting to re-define performance art using contemporary methods. All of the selected artists use video and audio recordings and playfully apply them to the human body in its media-represented form. The works also focus strongly on their interaction with public space. In preparation for this festival, HAU was cooperating with the world’s only performance art biennial “Performa” which took place in New York City for the fourth time in 2011.

Artistic director: Matthias Lilienthal
Artists: Keren Cytter (IL), Nevin Aladag, Phil Collins (GB), Ari Benjamin Meyers (USA), Dominique Gonzales-Foerster (FR), Pawel Althamer (PL), Tobias Rehberger and Simon Fujiwara.

Venue and schedule:
Hebbel am Ufer Berlin (HAU 1-3), 15 Sept. – 01 Oct. 2011