Focus on Performance at Parrish
Once a year the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill invites one artist to use the museum as a playground whose building, collection, and grounds are fair game for projects that use them in imaginative and innovative ways. Since the “Platform” series launched in November 2012, “We have been wondering how the series would incorporate performance, dance, and other artistic disciplines,” said Andrea Grover, the museum’s curator of special projects. “Since Jonah Bokaer is very much a crossover artist working between media, he seemed like the perfect person to invite to do this.”
From Saturday through Oct. 16, Mr. Bokaer, whose interdisciplinary practice combines dance, media art, history, and storytelling, will present two installations and one performance that make use of the galleries, landscape, and architecture. All three works are inspired in large measure by “Neither,” an idiosyncratic opera with a musical score by Morton Feldman and a 16-line libretto by Samuel Becket.
One component of the project is a two-channel video projection of a dance for the camera choreographed by Mr. Bokaer. One projection, on the east wall of the museum’s lobby, features four performers framed by the architecture and landscape of the building as seen through the south-facing window wall. The second video, projected on the opposite wall, shows the same view, but without performers.
The second element, titled, like the video, “Neither,” consists of 122 graphite drawings on Mylar of Feldman’s score for the opera. The drawings will be secured with monofilament to the ceiling beams that form the central spine of the building, one drawing to each beam and, in a sense, constitute a “visual score” for the silent video.
According to Ms. Grover, who organized the exhibition, “The ‘Neither’ opera has influenced many, many people, probably because it’s so opaque. There’s no narrative to it; it really repeats the same sentiment over and over. Many people have interpreted it as being about in-betweenness or about nothing or about a transitional state. It’s one of those tabula rasa kinds of works.”
The performance, “The Disappearing Portraits,” will take place on the south meadow on July 22 at 6 p.m. The audience will sit on the south-facing concrete bench that runs the length of the building. The score for the performance was created by the Soundwalk Collective, an international musical trio based in Berlin and New York City known for its musical compositions, audio guides, art exhibits, and walking tours of cities.
“Jonah has been fascinated by human migration, probably because his father originally emigrated from Tunisia and spent many years moving around the world. This, coupled with the largest migration in human history that’s happening now, has influenced him. So the performance is about this notion of people without a place or home, which relates to ‘Neither’ because the latter is also about this in-betweenness or the transition between states.”
Mr. Bokaer studied both dance and media arts and joined the Merce Cunningham Dance Company when he was only 18 years old. While he has designed apps and done work that is more visual art than performance, his specialty, according to Ms. Grover, is working in museums and collaborating with other visual artists.
He has worked extensively with Robert Wilson, and in November will be launching a project at the Brooklyn Academy of Music with Daniel Arsham and an original score by Pharrell Williams. He has performed at more than 30 museums around the world.
The new exhibition will coincide with the museum’s Midsummer Party, which will begin on Saturday at 6:30 p.m. with cocktails and be followed at 7:30 by dinner on the terrace. The 10 p.m. after-party, with desserts, drinks, and dancing, will be open only to members of the Parrish Contemporaries Circle, a new membership category, and their guests. Tickets to the Midsummer Party start at $1,500. After-party tickets are $150.
The museum has also announced the appointment of Chris Siefert as its deputy director. Mr. Siefert brings to the Parrish more than 20 years of professional museum experience spanning operations and administration, capital projects, public art, landscape architecture, and teaching with an emphasis on organizational systems, community engagement, and cultural programs. He comes to the Parrish from the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, where he was deputy director.