- Manal Abu-Shaheen
- Vahap Avşar
- Jesus Benavente and Felipe Castelblanco
- Brian Caverly
- Kerry Downey
- Magali Duzant
- Golnaz Esmaili
- Mohammed Fayaz
- Kate Gilmore
- Jonah Groeneboer
- Bang Geul Han and Minna Pöllänen
- Dave Hardy
- Sylvia Hardy
- Shadi Harouni
- Janks Archive
- Robin Kang
- Kristin Lucas
- Carl Marin
- Eileen Maxson
- Melanie McLain
- Shane Mecklenburger
- Lawrence Mesich
- Freya Powell
- Xiaoshi Vivian Vivian Qin
- Alan Ruiz
- Samita Sinha and Brian Chase
- Barb Smith
- Monika Sziladi
- Alina Tenser
- Trans-Pecos with 8 Ball Community, E.S.P. TV, and Chillin Island
- Mark Tribe
- Sam Vernon
- Max Warsh
- Jennifer Williams
- An Itinerary with Notes
- Exhibition Views
- Hidden
- Watershed
- A Distant Memory Being Recalled (Queens Teens Respond)
- Overhead: A Response to Kerry Downey’s Fishing with Angela
- Sweat, Leaks, Holes: Crossing the Threshold
- PULSE: On Jonah Groeneboer’s The Potential in Waves Colliding
- Interview: Melanie McLain and Alina Tenser
- Personal Space
- Data, the Social Being, and the Social Network
- Responses from Mechanical Turk
- MAPS, DNA, AND SPAM
- Queens Internacional 2016
- Uneven Development: On Beirut and Plein Air
- A Crisis of Context
- Return to Sender
- Interview: Vahap Avşar and Shadi Harouni
- Mining Through History: The Contemporary Practices of Vahap Avşar and Shadi Harouni
- A Conversation with Shadi Harouni's The Lightest of Stones
- Directions to a Gravel Quarry
- Walk This Way
- Interview: Brian Caverly and Barb Smith
- "I drew the one that has the teeth marks..."
- BEAT IT! (Queens Teens respond)
- Moments
- Lawn Furniture
- In Between Difference, Repetition, and Original Use
- Interview: Dave Hardy and Max Warsh
- Again—and again: on the recent work of Alan Ruiz
- City of Tomorrow
- Noticing This Space
- NO PLACE FOR A MAP
- The History of the World Was with Me That Night
- What You Don't See (Queens Teens Respond)
- Interview: Allison Davis and Sam Vernon
- When You’re Smiling…The Many Faces Behind the Mask
- Interview: Jesus Benavente and Carl Marin
- The Eternal Insult
- Janking Off
- Queens Theatricality
Prepersonal (2016) is the sculpture and Self-Extension Roll (2016) is the performance employing or inspired by the sculpture by Melanie McLain within the group exhibition Queens International 2016. The performance—semi-durational—was a timed event running for two hours on a busy Saturday afternoon at Queens Museum.
The sculpture by McLain is a delicate affair reminiscent of a futuristic bathroom stall where there is no toilet or sink but only a convenient ledge for an iPad, rendered in tactile materials, smooth surfaces, and soothing hues that call to mind flesh, milk, and areola. Three women performers, Ze’eva Berman, Katie Dean, and Phoebe Osborne, dressed in pants and t-shirts in the same muted hues of pink, red, and yellow as the sculpture, each took their turn inside Prepersonal, hanging from a steel towel rack, rubbing their bodies on a textured surface on the wall, or reaching through a hole in the partition to the other side where there might be a visitor watching a video on an iPad with whom they make unbroken but noncommittal eye contact. Each performer brought distinctly different airs to their performance—Osborne the slightly pained or paranoid, Berman the sulky pre-teen, and Dean the burdened space traveler. Because they first appear one at a time in the sculpture, the second and third performers are kind of a surprise when they turn up—as if the sculpture is a replication machine. On exiting the sculpture and gallery space they would then each lurk with excellent posture and grace nearby and in the lobby of the Museum. The lurking had several modes, invading the personal space of visitors by getting really close or following them around in the same noncommittal way as the staring, inexplicably doing yoga poses and handstands in the lobby, or reclining, sitting, and otherwise slow-motion climbing on steps and other objects.
During the performance, the artist mentions to me autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR)—the name for the very intimate enjoyment of the tiniest of sounds coined in 2010 and often sexualized as the “brain orgasm.” This contemporary phenomenon, made diagnosable by the Internet through videos, audio tracks, and discussion groups, is well tackled here by McLain. The video on the iPad is essentially an ASMR piece—the movements of the same performers set against flat planes to the tune of fingernails tapping on plastic, the ticking of a tiny clock, and the scratching of skin on a wall—the repetition, the level gazes, slow moving and soft barefoot steps, skulking closely into one’s personal space both in the video and live. The colors, the surfaces, the ASMR references, and the three women performers gave the sculpture and performance a distinctly feminine and slightly creepy sci-fi spin, like a good Margaret Atwood short story.
Esa Nickle joined the Performa team in May 2005 to launch the Performa biennial. She oversees the cultivation of an extended network of over 70 international co-commissioning and touring relationships and in 2013 piloted the international Pavilion Without Walls program for the biennial with Norway and Poland. Esa also curates food and music projects and has co-curated several large-scale music programs including “White Noise” at White Box and “Music for 16 Noise Intoners” featuring performances by Blixa Bargeld, John Butcher, and Joan La Barbara.