STEVEN HAMPTON

While this exhibition presents a thematic highlighting of some of FAR’s key moments, the majority of the selections complement FAR’s extensive involvement with music by creating a backdrop focused around sound and/or musically-driven performance, including, but not limited to, documented events of Glen Branca, Mike Kelley, Jim Shaw, Sonic Youth, and the Swans. With the above in mind, FAR’s PNST event seeks to extend and support the trajectory of these historical instances through an evening of performances that could easily be described as de-standardized art practices.

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Morgan Thomas, a founding member of FAR, described the early activities of the organization and its rampant experimentation as being in search of “an appropriate production model.” While FAR has been through a myriad of configurations since the 70s, the artists included in this exhibition exemplify this drive through a consistent re-tooling of standard practices that is anything but. This evening of performances brings together a dynamic group of artists with a similar interest in expanding the role(s) and/or perceived function of the artist as well as the exhibition space. Such a model of production poses questions about how we think about the concept of performativity in the early twenty-first century. Performance and/or theatricality have become increasingly porous as the “artist” becomes a nexus point defined by the roles of musician, composer, videographer and performer. Be it the transformation of the artist into larger than life “rock stars,” or the mutation of the traditional gallery into a makeshift club, it seems as if all of the issues surrounding performance have taken on the trappings of hyper self-reflexivity. We might even read this drive towards heightened (self-)awareness as a necessary model of production in our contemporary spectacle-driven culture because it challenges of what the condition of performance can be.