Operations in conflation of and across spectrums between:
> movement, organizing, activism, life art, social art, collaborative performance <
Sunday, September 21, 2025: Workshop (Dominique Duroseau) at Abrons Arts Center
OUR STUDIES SHOW, a play at/of collective philosophy/auto-research, iterated in sessions.
SESSION 1: November 18, 2024, Center for Performance Research
SESSION 2: December 3, 2024, CUNY Graduate Center
SESSION 3: December 9, 2024, Center for Performance Research
SESSIONS in January 2025, Kumasi, Ghana
More information and sign-up HERE.
Supported by a Faculty Fellowship from SPCUNY and the Rose C Lamont Fellowship.
++++PAST++++
OCTOBER 24-25 2024: AS PER SOME FORM: A Conference at CUNY Graduate Center. Sponsored and organized by the Doctoral Theatre Students Association and the CUNY Grad Center Dramaturgical Ensemble. Organized with committee members Jess Applebaum, Maria Litvan, Jasmeene Francois, and Mia Zhixuan Zhu.
June 2024: Brooklyn International Performance Art Museum (BIPAM) a small museum of ephemera, objects, and publications, installed at Center for Performance Research as part of the Premiere American Performance Art Museum curated by Ayana Evans.
August 2022: The Ivory Tower and the Open Worlds (CUNY Dramaturgical Ensemble/PPL/The Brick Theater) public epistemology/alternative epistemologies/epistemological pluralism and the colonial-modern theatre (Theatrum Mundi, a logical space as well as a public one)
Summer (June-September) 2020: PERFORMANCY FORUM: CORPUS COLISEUM organized in collaboration with Liminal Lab/The Operating System. During quarantines…
Current project is MARSH (Materializing & Activating Radical Social Habitus). MARSH is a biocultural life art laboratory, situating intentional forms of habitus and plural, reciprocal, consensual worldings. The site (a previously-vacant double building in St. Louis MO) is now home to a WORKER’S OWNED COOPERATIVE DINER, FOOD-CO-OP, PERFORMANCE/GATHERING/EXHIBITION SPACE, ORGANIC GARDEN, and RESIDENCY/EMERGENCY/TRANSITIONAL HOUSING. GoFundMe. FB: /marshlifeart IG: @marsh_stl
Institution is a Verb book with community-contributed texts and archive, with The Operating System. Documenting, framing, indexing organizational projects took place at Panoply Performance Laboratory: 104 Meserole Street, Brooklyn, NY 2012-2018 and the performative institution of PPL itself as insurgent demi-public space, lab for performance research, and community center. OS SEED CATALOG
—-
Primary curatorial-organizational activities (at PPL and elsewhere) are performed under the name PERFORMANCY FORUM (since 2009) and are often collaboratively organized via committee or small artist-lead team. PF WEBSITE.
2012-2018 organized/lived/worked through PPL’s lab site in Brooklyn, NY, see archival list of projects and exhibitions HERE
See also Brooklyn International Performance Art Foundation (an entity initiated in 2013 to collectively organize mass works of constructive institutional critique) and Brooklyn International Performance Art Festival.
Other organizational/curatorial projects have operated at/through/with ABC No Rio, Grace Exhibition Space, Gowanus Ballroom, SUPERFRONT at Industry City, Columbia University, SVA, JACK, Staten Island Arts Council, Dixon Place, and elsewhere in NYC, in Berlin, DE as part of Month of Performance Art, MANA Contemporary in Chicago and many spaces, sites, and situations across the USA.
SELECTED PAST ORGANIZATIONAL PROJECTS: Ongoing: touring/de-centralization/agit-prop practices
relational marches: 2014 (MAROONING/talk of the town/not happenings) and 2016 (MIRAGE), also Vehicle Relocation ProgramNovember 2018: METAMORPHOSIS festival turning over PPL site (final performances)
April 21, May 26, Sept. 29, Oct. 20, Nov. 10, 2018: CIVIC REFLEX/REFLEJO CIVICO
May 6-20, 2018: Citizen Participation: Diagrams & Directives, ABC No Rio at Bullet Space
June 1-3, 2018: Moral (En)Compassings, Center for Performance Research
Ongoing, 2018: 9 PROPOSITIONS, nine independent thinktanks using intentional(ized) modes of performance as frames for discourse and practice
JUST SITUATIONS: a performative convention (2017, organized with Leili Huzaibah)
Post-Dance Symposium organized with Leili Huzaibah, Rebecca Ferrell (University of Illinois) and others, PPL (2016)Sounding the Alarm: Theories of the Anti-Sight, as part of Month of Performance Art Berlin (ANTHOLOGY) (2015)
Do I Do 4-day collaborative project organized with Teena Lange, Ali Dolanbay in Berlin, DE, at Gruentaler9 and Meinblau
PERFORMANCY FORUM QUINQUENNIAL (2015) at Grace Exhibition Space, marking 5 years of platfform and thinktank. Named as one of Brooklyn’s top 10 art shows of 2015 by Hyperallergic.Exchange between PPL and Petrichor Performance Collective (exhibitions and talks in NYC and Boston at The School of the Museum of Fine Arts)
Theorems Proofs Rebuttals and Propositions: A Conference of Theoretical Theater (organized with Yelena Gluzman). A conference-as-theater-project involving a preview (Dr. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Varispeed/Robert Ashley, Doug Barrett) and a two-weekend conference involving Plenary Projects by Reality Research Center, Amapola Prada, Kikuko Tanaka, and Mike Taylor, critical sessions with Anna Watkins Fisher, Gavin Kroeber, and Chloë Bass, and formal performed responses by 20 conference participants. Glasshouse Projects, Momenta Art, Collapsible Hole. Supported by Culture Push Honorary Fellowship for Utopian Practices.
BIPAF (“F” for Festival) 2013 festival as a work of collective, constructive institutional critique, specific events like the Long Table at Glasshouse Projects, organized with The Hemispheric Institute for Performance and Politics (2013) as part of the framing exhibition (project with Chloe Bass and Lital Dotan,), as well as catalog, initiating and framing texts, other exhibitions, launched the Foundation.
Operations and Participations (Grace Exhibition Space, Vaudeville Park, 2012)
Mode Method Medium (University of the Streets, 2011)
Organizer at Surreal Estate (2008-2011)
Collaborations and Organizational endeavors are also performed with/as:
No Wave Performance Task Force (NWPTF) a feminist performance art task force: collaborative actions, public demonstrations, activism, social gatherings. And as a member of Feminist Art Group (FAG) a video/social performance group founded by IV Castellanos. Founding Member with Ayana Evans: Social Health Performance Club
Esther Marveta Neff 