Within the art world, “performance” often refers to time-based projects played out by actors or (more frequently) artists. Current artistic interest in performance has expanded to include a consideration of the systems and effects of performing that increasingly inflect the everyday. Recent programming at The Power Plant has tracked these interests, not only through our Live series, but also through solo exhibitions such as Francesco Vezzoli: A True Hollywood Story; Goldin and Senneby: Looking for Headless and the group shows Not Quite How I Remember It and Auto Emotion.

 

This second issue of Switch continues this consideration. Kathleen Ritter invokes Julia Kristeva’s notion of revolt as permanent questioning, rather than fixed event, while discussing artworks that draw from past political protests. Surely part of performance’s appeal is the challenge it presents to museums, collectors and conservators, as Christopher Eamon observes in considering some of the most celebrated and notorious performances by artists from the past decade. These contexts and constraints also inform Mike Sperlinger’s discussion of artworks that emulate financial procedures. Sperlinger highlights the charges of cynicism that such overtly ambivalent and complicit projects provoke.