Daniel Fish. Photo: Tei Blow
To commemorate the year that was, we invited an array of artists, writers, designers, and curators—from graphic designer Na Kim to filmmaker Tala Hadid, artist Adam Pendleton to the Black Futures project—to share a list of the most noteworthy ideas, events, and objects they encountered in 2015.
Daniel Fish is a New York–based director who makes work across the boundaries of theater, video, and opera. Drawing on a broad range of forms and subject matter including plays, film scripts, contemporary fiction, essays, and found audio, he’s been called “an auteur force in the American theater.” Fish’s work has been performed at theaters and festivals throughout the US and Europe including: Vooruit, Festival TransAmériques, BAM Next Wave Festival, Noorderzon Festival, the Juilliard School, and the Royal Shakespeare Company. He has taught at Juilliard, the Yale School of Drama, Bard College, and Princeton University. In January, he’ll present A (radically condensed and expanded) Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again After David Foster Wallace and screen Eternal as part of the Walker’s Out There series.
Here, he reflects on the loss (of great artists) and discovery (of new images and ideas) that the past 365 days have held.
Best use of party streamers and mannequins
Called Schauspieler (German for “actor”), Isa Genzken’s show at David Zwirner Gallery kept taking me by surprise, especially when it reversed the viewing experience and was suddenly, quietly looking at me.
Photo: Kenneth Saunders
Greatest loss of a filmmaker
Chantal Akerman’s final film, which premiered in New York City the day after her death, is a slow, challenging, and deeply human work about her mother. Her work is fearless, and she kept searching.
Best use of arrows
Gordon Matta-Clark’s drawings: I could look at these all day long.
Photo courtesy DRAMA-Berlin.de
Greatest loss of a theater artist
Bert Neumann, the great stage and costume designer, graphic artist, and wild mind of Berlin’s Volksbühne. A huge influence and inspiration to so many people working in theater, many of whom are unaware he’s influenced them. A hero is gone, and an era ends.
Photo: Paula Court
Most haunted performance
The Vine of the Dead, Jim Findlay’s gorgeous, long work about ghosts and his family, splayed out across the boiler room dungeon of New York’s Westbeth apartment building.
Photo: IAAP
Greatest loss of a gifted teacher
Age 88, professor emeritus of Performance Studies at Northwestern University and Jungian analyst, Dr. Leland Roloff taught me that “language is psychic breath.”
Best book I somehow missed reading until this year
James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room. Read it if you have not.
Most challenging film
Nearly 13 hrs of seductive, wearying, funny 1970’s French guerrilla filmmaking, the re-release of Jaques Rivette’s OUT no. 1 manages to call up associations of both Molière and the October Paris attacks.
Most effective object of the year
The gun.
Most ineffective object of the year
The gun.
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