This conversation is excerpted from On Value, edited by New York-based magazine Triple Canopy and Ralph Lemon, to be published in November; it appears here one year to the day after Lemon’s Scaffold Room concluded its world premiere at the Walker, on the occasion of Lemon’s return to the Walker for a “memory refraction” related to the work. A performance installation in the Walker’s Burnet Gallery, Scaffold Room fueled this conversation about developing and presenting performance in galleries, on stages, and in other settings. Lemon is joined by Walker curator Philip Bither and Sarah Michelson, whose work tournamento premiered on September 24 on the Walker stage. On Value employs documentation of a series of conversations organized by Lemon at the Museum of Modern Art in 2013 and 2014, as well as newly commissioned essays and artworks, to ask how and why performers, choreographers, and dancers might go about making art institutions into proper venues, even caretakers, for their works. Visit Triple Canopy for more information and to preorder On Value.
Ralph Lemon
Let’s begin with the distinction, if there is or should be one, between a curator and a presenter.
Philip Bither
The definition of “curator” has dramatically expanded in the last few years. Generally, that’s a healthy thing. But what constitutes a curator is now very fluid. I think that the notion of a performance curator is being redefined. It involves some skills in producing and presenting, but it also has to include some capacity to interpret and to articulate the work of artists.
One of my questions is: Is the creation of interpretive text the primary yardstick for being a credible curator? In the realm of performance, writing is not the only measure that establishes curatorial credibility. I think the visual art world has tended to overemphasize writing as the primary vehicle by which one creates credentials as a curator.
Lemon
It is apples and oranges we’re talking about.
Bither
Well, to a certain extent. I think there have been effective presenters who were respected partly because of their ability to serve as an interpretive interface with artists. They didn’t always do it through the use of language, or through the creation of catalogues. Sometimes it was through other kinds of platforms that opened up an artist’s work for a public. But people trained in the written form sometimes look at writing as the exclusive mechanism by which the effectiveness of a curator can be measured.
A presenter might have a full understanding of the evolution of contemporary dance, and might be able to express that history effectively in program notes, or in dialogues in the public, or in conversations with artists. But unless that knowledge also takes the form of an exhibition catalogue, it sometimes doesn’t count in the museum world. We may say it’s a healthy, exciting thing that museums are now historicizing dance, but it’s only through a particular lens. And that lens leaves out a vast part of an approach to documenting dance history and writing about dance and thinking about dance.
Sarah Michelson
This is messy, but I do think it’s fine that the visual art canon—I don’t even know what the visual art canon is, just to be really clear—but if the museum wants to access and include performance in the canon, by whatever means it does so, I think that’s fine. It’s up to them. But that activity represents a separate structure, then—another structure—one that we don’t even have yet, maybe, which is more ephemeral. And maybe we haven’t valued evidence.
You’re talking about the museum, and ownership, and the canon, and art history, and about performance being taken into art history on art history’s terms. At the same time, you’re also referring to a slight misunderstanding or sense of inequality between the ideas of a museum curator and a performance presenter, and what those jobs are. In the art
world, the only evidence that works are shown in a particular way and in a particular order is manifest in the curator’s catalogue. The catalogue becomes the evidence. And doing that is a very different job than Philip’s job.
Bither
Wouldn’t you like to have someone who supports the development of your next dance work also be able to write about it and place it within a historical context?
Michelson
I really, really struggle with it. Sometimes I really feel like I would be relieved, because the smallest part of me would actually like ownership and authorship. But then there’s the prospect of seeing my ideas disappear and then reappear and having no evidence of who did what. So in the smallest part of me, I would like that, but for the larger part of me, the lack of evidence is very healthy for my continued travel.
Lemon
But is that—
Michelson
–Masochistic?
Lemon
No. Do you sincerely feel that?
Michelson
Yes.
Lemon
I think that way sometimes, too. It’s why we are attracted to this ephemeral form, right? But I suspect neither of us, when we began dancing, had that language.
Michelson
No.
Lemon
But this attraction to its basic fleetingness was at its core.
Michelson
That I have to reinvent, that it doesn’t exist when I look back is very, very painful at times. And I’m hardcore about it. I don’t really have any video. I feel afraid of the distillation of the moment into form. I feel really afraid of it.
Lemon
But someone just came in and gave us some catalogs for a show none of us saw. And since none of us saw the show, the catalogs themselves become the thing—evidence. They can be signed. They can be given away as gifts. I see that as something other than what you’re talking about, Sarah. It’s different from documentation changing your dance. Because documentation can change the nature of your dance, can’t it?
Michelson
I completely agree with that. But there is self-importance to the object.
Lemon
There’s an ego to the object. Sure.
Michelson
And I worry about that.
Lemon
But there’s an ego to your dance.
Michelson
Yeah, but it goes away.
Lemon
Kind of. It flows. You know what I mean? Dance resonates differently than just going away.
I think it’s just our own personal psychic hold on how these two worlds are working.
Bither
As a field, we’re struggling to find the best form for thoughtful and intelligent representations of experience. These may not be museum catalogs, but they should still be able to historicize performance within the canon of contemporary dance, or even contemporary art. Ralph, you’ve created a different book for each of The Geography Trilogy pieces. They are interesting mixtures of art, writing, journals, design, and photographs. The sum is very different than any of those individual components, of course. The books represent a unique model for others to follow to create a lasting form that bears a relationship to a performance that went away.
Lemon
But the lasting form is very, very different than the thing that went away. That was very clear to me. Like: “I’m now writing.” There are things that a dance can do that this book can’t do. And there are things that a book can do that a dance can’t do.
Michelson
Yeah, but that’s not what we’re talking about, is it?
Lemon
Well, kind of. It’s this idea of language as a refraction of an object. Forget the canon, that is.
Michelson
But The Geography Trilogy is a really different matter than the canon. That’s Ralph making books about his own work.
Lemon
I agree with you. Many of the curators I know are on their own path. They say, “Here’s my catalog.” It contains the things that interest them about what the work represents—canonized or not.
Bither
I have to say, I admire my visual art curator colleagues who take a very proactive stance around framing and interpreting work. They almost create something new by selecting work and then writing about it. I program a season, which is very different then curating a group show. In some way, though, I tend to think about the six or seven pieces we commission and help develop each year as my contribution to the field. I’ve chosen a different path, maybe, because I’m more comfortable interpreting work through conversation, video interviews with artists, some limited writing, good documenting, and, in some ways, simply by trying to produce the work as best as I can. And as they’re getting more interested in performance, live experiences, and time-based work, I think that visual art curators are finding that they lack some of those skills around producing and developing live art.
Lemon
They probably possess none of those skills, really.
Bither
But if you’re a performance curator, aren’t those skills part of the tool kit that you have to carry with you? The same way you’ve got to learn to write about the work you’re presenting, at least at a limited level, if you come out of the presenting field? That’s why it’s an exciting and conflicted moment—the worlds are trying to learn from each other.
But that brings me to my problem with the first Value Talks conversation with Simone Forti, Boris Charmatz, and Ralph, which I think might just be a question of hubris. Within the art world, the power and privilege possessed by that world is often intentionally unacknowledged or not recognized. So when the art world starts to talk about dance history, for instance, my fear is that those discussions will become the only record of a whole art form’s history, and that it will be written by people who are, generally, relatively new to the art form and don’t have the full picture. That’s what I felt at the Value Talks conversation. I had a sense that MoMA was framing the dialogue with three major choreographers from three different generations, and that it was the definitive word, and that it would now enter into art history. But I didn’t think the word was very definitive. Or complete.
Lemon
Not to defend MoMA, but I did not feel that the conversation was presented as being the definitive word. MoMA certainly had the megaphone. It’s their space. The event language and its framework were intended to give context within the visual art world. But it wasn’t the definitive word.
Michelson
Even if it isn’t the definitive word, ten years from now it’ll be in the Museum of Modern Art archive. So if you weren’t there, and those conversations are what you find, then it’s the Museum of Modern Art, there’s a stamp on it, and it’s going to read as true in art history. In 2014, this is what got said. Boom! Museum of Modern Art. I think that’s what you’re saying.
Lemon
I feel the need to play devil’s advocate.
Michelson
Because you’re the chosen MoMA artist?
Lemon
We’re talking about a particularly well-built, well-functioning machine. Kind of like a vortex.
Michelson
Is it well functioning or is it dysfunctional?
Lemon
I think it’s functioning.
Michelson
Well functioning, you said.
Lemon
It’s not a broken-down machine.
Michelson
No. It’s a slick machine. It’s fast.
Lemon
And powerful. And it’s a vortex.
Michelson
It’s totally a vortex.
Lemon
And so if MoMA is interested in performance, or dance, it gets sucked in. I have questions about whether anything can really be done about that.
Bither
You could say it’s up to the artist.
Lemon
To say no.
Bither
Or to make sure the conversation is as full and accurate as possible, and to insist that other voices are in the audience and that there’s time to hear from them and that those voices are part of the historic record, too. I feel like our worlds still have very separate lives, but that we’re now reaching an exciting moment where the packs could break down. I travel in my own pack of contemporary art center curator-presenters, essentially. We don’t talk to many people in the visual art world, but we share some of the same problems—following each other down paths after certain artists, for example, or not including the larger context of contemporary art movements in our thinking about the work that we’re presenting. I am often embarrassed about the lack of substance in the presenting world. But what is the proper way to go about historicizing dance as part of an art-historical tradition? Sarah, you entirely reject the notion of historicizing your work as a part of any canon. You don’t want that interpretation. You’d rather just have the work out there for people to take in.
Michelson
Well, I did these works with the Whitney, and I won the Bucksbaum prize, and I was the first choreographer to win. All that stuff.
Bither
And I bet Devotion Study #1 was written about in the Whitney Biennial catalogue, for instance.
Michelson
Actually, I only sent them six photographs for the Whitney Biennial catalogue. That’s all. There was no write-up.
Lemon
So you’re aggressively resisting textual interpretation.
Michelson
I am. But I had these shows at the Whitney, and I feel that I am part of that museum’s history now in a really clear way. I think the fourth floor of the Breuer building has only been fully open five or six times, ever. And two of those times were for me. It’s clear to me that I inhabited part of that museum’s history. The museum’s perspective on that experience—of my work, and of me—belongs to them. But my experience of the work inside my larger body of work, and inside the larger conversation I have with Ralph’s work, and how all that goes forward—those things are not contained within the Whitney’s perspective on my work.
There are two “canons” happening: There’s the moment of interface that I have with the museum, which the museum captures, analyzes, archives, contextualizes, and distills in a certain way that I cannot. I do my best to keep all my work really alive and as untouchable as possible. I don’t know how much of that is done on purpose to resist the incoming canon, and how much of it has always been my nature. I’ve always not wanted a website. I’ve always, always been insistent that if you weren’t there, you weren’t there. You missed it. I think that I’ve had to be a little bit more forceful in the face of the museum, because the museum comes at me a little more strongly about materials and after-materials and wall labels. I’ve had to be a little bit more intense about saying “This is a dance. This is a set. I’m a choreographer.” But there’s a separate world that I inhabit that isn’t touched as long as I’m clear enough that I don’t think we do have a way to really name or understand our history.
Someone asked me about this earlier. He said, “You and Ralph, you’re obviously friends. You’re looking at his work. I see you looking at his work.” He was curious, asking, “Is it nice?” He had this image of us. He had this idea of us working, and of the work somehow interfacing, but it seemed mysterious, and that must be nice for us. And it is nice for us.
Lemon
Yes.
Michelson
And what is that? I don’t know.
Lemon
It’s totally mysterious.
Michelson
Totally. It’s mysterious. It’s my food, and it’s very live. That’s what I treasure, acute moments—like when we all get photographed together. I love that distillation. But otherwise …
Bither
You’re really independent creators.
Lemon
Obviously.
Michelson
But we are definitely alive at the same time. We are definitely working at the same time. We are alive. He gave me blues, I gave him back soul. We’re happening.
Bither
You’re stealing from each other!
Lemon
It’s like Dylan’s Love and Theft.
Michelson
So that’s happening. It exists in the air, in the room, and it goes into my body, and into what I do. And then that goes into the air, too. There’s no capture for that. And I hope there never is.
Lemon
I feel you’re having a privileged reaction to having this other art-politic really interested in your work.
Michelson
You think it’s privileged? The things I’m saying sound so desperate to me.
Lemon
Because this world—
Michelson
Did you hear me say that it felt desperate?
Lemon
I heard that, but I don’t buy it.
Michelson
It’s true!
Lemon
This world—
Michelson
Oh my god, I’m going to kill you!
Lemon
This world is interested in you. The visual art world is not interested in hundreds of other choreographers I could name. They’re not. They’re interested in you. And that’s significant, on some level. And you know that.
Michelson
Yeah, but I think you’re putting the cart before the horse. Philip Bither was interested in me first. And I started this relationship with [former director of the Walker Art Center, current MoMA associate director] Kathy Halbreich because of Philip Bither. And my relationship with Kathy brought me, ultimately, into the position I’m in. She introduced me to [Whitney Museum curator of performance] Jay Sanders. And to you, Ralph. So this is a debate that I have been having for a while. In 2005, when the Walker Art Center commissioned Daylight, they invited me from the outset to take over the whole building. So I commissioned local teenagers to paint portraits of Walker staff to be hung in the galleries. But the Walker wouldn’t let me hang the paintings: They said I could only have dancers in the museum, no objects. It seemed they feared the paintings would be mistaken for “actual” art—after the marketing materials had been sent out saying I was going to “take over the building,” right? I had to make a case that the paintings were a set, not art. The visual art department didn’t have any interest in me. But thanks to Kathy, we got the go ahead, although the portraits had to be taken down during gallery hours and then reinstalled each evening before the performance.
Lemon
Yeah, and you’d have to break them down after the performance every night.
Michelson
And the whole thing coincided with a Chuck Close exhibit. It was so perfect. It couldn’t have been more perfect. Each night, the portraits of Walker staff were next to Chuck Close—
Lemon
People thought you’d planned it like that.
Michelson
I never did. This debate was going on already. I’m going to sound like a total asshole, but I think this debate was inside the work.
Lemon
Inside your work.
Michelson
Yes. I didn’t have a deliberate relationship to the visual art world before Philip brought me face-to-face with it at the Walker. But when I did come face-to-face with the visual art world, I was like, “I’m a choreographer. This painting is a set piece.” A set piece for a dance has to be able to go next to a piece of visual art, even if they’re both portraits. Can that work? There already was a defense of choreography, and of dance being inside the museum on its own terms, with its own language. As I went into a museum again, I think that seed was inside the work.
Lemon
I see.
Michelson
I built the dance floor at the Whitney as a dance floor. Like, “This is a set.” I think the attraction around my work grew around the question: What is this tension between something that seems to be presenting on the museum’s terms, but is actually bringing this dirty world of performance a little bit too close? I think the magnetism of my work, if there is any, is not about me or even the work, it’s about this problem that I bring. Not on purpose—because I’m desperate. I’m not privileged.
Bither
I think the “dirty” side could be integrated into the Walker because we have a fifty-year history of bringing in live performing artists. The Walker is a multidisciplinary center and not just a museum.
Michelson
Yes, totally.
Bither
And we’re now able to integrate even further. Or even subvert, in some ways. Sarah, when you mention that the Whitney is able to do whatever they want with documenting and archiving, it brings to mind what the Walker is trying to do with Ralph’s Scaffold Room project.
Michelson
That’s not quite true. I do argue with them.
Bither
But ultimately they will end up including that material. We’re trying to do something new with this project with Ralph. Ralph, his collaborators, and the institution are developing a score that involves thirty or forty moments of the performance collected in different formats. When completed, it will constitute a kind of creative capture of this real-time experience—different from a catalogue. Maybe that’s needed as well. But what we’re doing is another kind of beast.
Lemon
It’s important that it’s that porous. It doesn’t just become another thing that can be stored in some warehouse as an archive. It’s more than that.
Bither
This is something we haven’t really resolved—is the Scaffold Room so unwieldy that it can’t function as a model for other institutions? Will other institutions even be able to get their arms around it?
Lemon
The inability could be a good thing, if it’s articulated well. Then instead of traveling to other places, the Scaffold Room would be a Walker memory exhibition.
Bither
This is also tied to the notion of an acquisition. If we don’t agree with the way a lot of museums are approaching acquiring performance, in particular the exclusivity around ownership, then what are we proposing differently?
Lemon
Well, Scaffold Room is what we’re proposing.
Bither
The Walker doesn’t own Scaffold Room. No one needs to come to us for the rights or pay us in order to do their own version of Scaffold Room. But hopefully, if another city does it, they will create their own set of materials that will be their score—or their acquisition—for their community.
Lemon
It will be their translation of the conversation.
Michelson
The presenters who partner with me to develop unwieldy work over many years are very dedicated to their communities. Always. And they are always looking for ways for their communities to have access to the world. Part of being a presenter is a dedication to the place that you live.
Bither
When I questioned MoMA’s purchase of Huddle from Simone Forti, Kathy said, “Listen, what’s so bad about us attempting to preserve this great work? Who else is going to preserve it?” I said back to her, “Well, my only concern is that years down the road others won’t have access to Huddle. It will be great that MoMA owns it and preserved it, and has hours of Simone on video teaching Huddle to other dancers, and that that’s all captured, but how do you protect it so that it doesn’t get so tangled in MoMA’s bureaucratic morass that it won’t be allowed to see the light of day when some small college wants to do their version of Huddle?” I haven’t figured out how I feel about it.
It’s interesting that ever since I got to the Walker, my title has been curator. I didn’t choose that title for myself. Kathy felt that that’s what this position needed. But I think it involves a lot more. And it is different than a visual art curator.
Michelson
James Tyson in Wales won’t be called a curator. He calls himself a performance organizer.
Bither
Some curators trained in visual art are now asking for the title “producer,” either in addition or instead of “curator.” With the work that you two do, I feel like I inhabit both those roles at times.
Michelson
Totally.
Lemon
I think a lot of this has to with just how improvisational it is for us to make work.
Michelson
Totally. We get here and we don’t know what the fuck we’re doing.
Lemon
We don’t have dealers who can ultimately sell an edition of a shoe, or a set. So it’s like, how does this thing get made? How do performers get paid? To me that’s really the locus of all this other formatting.
Michelson
I know someone told me that I should make an edition of those neons.
Lemon
And then there are the people that we work with, who have these different titles. It’s been very interesting working with the team at the Walker—both the Performing Arts Department and the Visual Arts Department.
Bither
It’s helped the project.
Michelson
Philip is probably asking you what time it starts and many audience members there are going to be.
Bither
Oh, come on! It’s more than that!
Michelson
I know it’s more than that.
Lemon
But he’s very interested in the audience. I’m not so sure that the visual art people are as interested. They are interested in how it holds space.
Michelson
That’s what I’m pointing out.
Bither
Ralph has said several times, “It’s totally fine if no one is at my show today at 1 o’clock.” Then we had this big conversation, because I feel like part of my job is to have people be inspired by your work in real time. And yet you guys have just made the point: If you’re not there, you’re not there. But what if no one’s there?
Lemon
Well, I think that’s OK for me.
Michelson
Totally OK for me.
Bither
But it’s my job to make sure it’s OK for this community. We’ve invested a lot of money, and we want people’s lives to be affected—for good or ill, whatever.
I wonder if, as vanguard dance-makers, you feel that there’s a real lack of places that write intelligently about your work, and therefore whether the museum system and publication system offer some real hope or some added opportunity for you. There’s the Movement Research Performance Journal; university dance departments write about things; certain amounts of journalism; commissioned essays. There are ways that dance is written about besides the museum catalogue model.
Lemon
I’m a fan of good scholarship. And I’m not anti-catalogue. I’d call it something else, if it had some kind of relationship to my work. But I think the catalogue is a good thing. It’s a way of circulating the work. It’s a way of disseminating.
Bither
And that’s where you guys have a difference of opinion.
Lemon
Yeah. I’m not saying you are, Sarah, but I am not threatened by that process. It is separate from the work, as far as I’m concerned. It won’t affect how I make the next thing. It won’t even affect how I think about the next thing.
Michelson
I think you’re right, I do feel threatened. For me acquisition feels like very dangerous ground. I don’t have a body of work. Or I haven’t understood what my body of work is. Maybe you know much more about your work than I do about mine. I always feel like a fucking leaf or a blade of grass or something, and I have no idea what I’m doing. So someone saying, “It’s this!” is terrifying to me. Even if it has no effect, it has some effect on me.
Bither
Is that because you lose control over the interpretation of your own work?
Michelson
I honestly think it’s because I’m not an intellectual. I’m a farmer. I’m a craftsperson. I don’t think that I write or think like an academic. It seems very comforting to me to be able to do that, actually, but I don’t have that ability. I don’t think I’m stupid or anything, but I’m not an academic. I work in this very physical place of understanding. I try to understand what the fuck I’m doing through all these instincts. The idea of someone writing what it was—or not even writing it, but naming it, or distilling it into a point in time, is terrifying to me. It feels like cement. I just want energy to keep going forwards.
That’s what I mean when I say I’m desperate in the museum. It doesn’t feel privileged for me. I’m lucky, of course. I’m privileged to be in a museum. But this particular discussion doesn’t feel like a privilege.
Bither
If museums don’t collect dance and preserve it, who else is going to? If Huddle isn’t protected and bought by MoMA, how else will it survive?
Lemon
I know a little bit about this process. Simone has been in deep conversations with Ana Janevski and others at MoMA about this acquisition. From what I hear, she’s into it. She’s excited. She’s pleased.
Michelson
I actually think that the Museum of Modern Art inviting Simone Forti into the canon in that way seems appropriate. I don’t think it’s the only place for her work to be historicized, but I think it’s totally appropriate. I completely recognize that this exact discussion is really perfect for other people. It’s great for [choreographer] Trajal Harrell. Being in the museum, and part of that conversation, and documented, and owned, and distilled in those moments—that’s fire in his ass. That makes him work hard. That makes him more excited.
Lemon
Well, for Trajal the museum is just organic.
Michelson
The museum is organic to the work, right. And I’m on the line of insanity or something.
Lemon
But that’s the point. What does the artist want? Right? I suspect that’s kind of the benefit of dealing with this ephemeral stuff. You get to choose—imagine—how it’s held or not.
Michelson
Sometimes the interface coming towards me does feel very stressful.
Bither
There is a select group of artists whose work fits the lens, and it makes sense for the work to be placed in certain museums. Maybe it’s just that visual art curators have gotten access to their work. But there is a whole host of other choreographers—the vast majority in fact—who haven’t been recognized in that way, and who haven’t been invited inside. And maybe that’s OK too. But it gets back to the thing that disturbs me, or that I worry a little bit about. Will that select group of artists become all of dance history in the early part of the twenty-first century?
Lemon
But there are other academic performance journals that publish writing about different dance artists, right?
Bither
There are. But in the dance field, are there places besides MoMA that people will look to in fifty years, thirty years, or even ten years, and say, “Oh, this place was important at that moment, and yes, we should look back at what was happening there at that time?”
Lemon
Yes and no. Certain dance histories will be uncovered, of course. But it’s the museums who are holding art history. They’re dictating it. They’re writing it.
Michelson
Museums may be ignoring some contemporary dance-makers, but that may be natural. Dance is a wide form. There’s Lincoln Center. New ballet choreographers may be making changes within the ballet world. Those may be significant within dance history, if we consider the whole world of dance. But it doesn’t interface with us directly.
Lemon
But there are historicizing mechanisms in the ballet world, I would assume.
Michelson
I don’t know if there are, apart from the New York Times. Honestly.
Lemon
But there’s scholarship. There are people writing books. About Balanchine. Still.
Bither
Jennifer Homans.
Even though I’m not sure how I feel about what comes attached to acquisition, that’s why I wanted us to go down that road. The notion of acquisition increases the level of attention and concern for the work. I love our history of commissioning work. I’ve always thought of the pieces we’ve commissioned as our “collection” in performing arts.
But it’s not quite as esteemed as presenting and acquiring—even without exclusive ownership.
Lemon
I think this conversation is also breaking down these inter-institutional silos. And that is only a good thing. It’s less about performance being valued in art institutions, and more about its generative potential—what it does for a particular place. And it’s about how more and more interstitial performance work might become valued. Not is valued, but might be. That, to me, is very exciting.
Get Walker Reader in your inbox. Sign up to receive first word about our original videos, commissioned essays, curatorial perspectives, and artist interviews.