CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 8/20/2022

In 'On the Town,' an important document of more than 100 groundbreaking Performa commissions, 2016–2021

Weighing in at almost 400 pages and featuring more than 200 color images, On the Town: A Performa Compendium 2016–2021 documents Performa commissions by more than 100 of the leading artists, choreographers, architects, theater and film directors working today. "Since its inception, Performa has been a leader in commissioning artists whose work has collectively shaped a new chapter in the multi-century legacy of visual artists working in live performance," Performa founder RoseLee Goldberg writes. "The resulting commissions and scholarship examine immediate and critical concerns confronting our urban centers, the shifting political and cultural currents of our turbulent world and ultimately the role of the arts and of artists in articulating the complex sociopolitical context informing contemporary art today. Each Performa Commission is conceived to engage audiences in significantly understanding and absorbing these many different aesthetics, values, cultures and climates. … The Performa Biennial provides an extraordinary and very public platform for showing the essential role of art in society. Through live performance we touch people directly, change their minds, and introduce them viscerally to the complicated emotional and aesthetic expressions of artists responding to the world in which we live today."