Mellon Interdisciplinary Research Initiative

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One-millon dollar grant project supported by the Mellon Foundation to support a three-and-a-half year Interdisciplinary Initiative, from July 2016 through December, 2019 focusing specifically on the intersection of performance, performing arts, and visual arts. The grant enbled deep research projects, commissions and documention towards a deepened understanding of historical boundary-pushing innovation in order to inform and frame a reinvigoration of presentation and production conventions today.

Organized by Fionn Meade and Philip Bither with Adrienne Edwards

Maria Hassabi, STAGING

Since the early 2000s, New York–based artist and choreographer Maria Hassabi (b. Cyprus, 1973) has developed a distinct choreographic practice involved with exploring the relationship of body to image and defined by sculptural physicality and extended duration.

For the premiere of her commissioned work STAGING (2017; February 8–14, 2017), eight dancers performed continuously during gallery hours in public spaces and within the galleries of the Walker-organized exhibition Merce Cunningham: Common Time (February 8–July 30, 2017). The performers’ presence in these locations formed a sculptural movement installation that unfolded as a progression of highly formal choreographies composed of stillness and decelerated movements. As part of this durational dance piece, Hassabi realized a two-part installation titled Lighting Wall #1 and Lighting Wall #2. Situated at the entrances of two different galleries and physically removed from the dancers, the shifting lights reflected the spatial and temporal configurations of the choreography in performance.

A component of the larger STAGING production, Hassabi’s STAGING: solo (2017)—a live installation performed by a single dancer—was subsequently acquired by the Walker for the collection. Oscillating between dance and sculpture, subject and object, live body and still image, the work tests conventional forms of viewership and of museum collecting practices. Developed in close collaboration with the artist, the acquisition not only ensures the integrity of Hassabi’s choreographic voice but also establishes a plan for future training of the work’s performers by the artist and a group of her trusted collaborators. In addition to the live dance, Hassabi also conceived archival and sculptural iterations of the work, which can be exhibited independently of the performed piece.

Bouchra Ouizguen: Corbeaux (Crows)

Equal parts living sculpture and ecstatic performance catharsis, this powerful ritualistic work by Moroccan choreographer Bouchra Ouizguen offers an experience both intimate and universal. Presented in nontheatrical spaces with a 22-member collective of Moroccan and Minnesotan women, Ouizguen’s mystical music and movement event has been riveting audiences throughout the world.

Laure Provoust, They Are Waiting for You

The multilayered, two-part project Laure Prouvost: They Are Waiting for You was composed of a new installation presented in the gallery (October 12, 2017–February 11, 2018) and a theatrical performance work, co-commissioned and coproduced by the Walker and EMPAC, Troy, New York (February 9–10, 2018). For the gallery installation, conceptual artist Laure Prouvost (France, b. 1978) combined a new moving image work with painting, sculpture, and found objects, which were arranged in a “waiting room” outside a central video space. The resulting environment, interspersed with spoken and written instructions, drew visitors into a space of shifting terrain that conflated reality with fiction and art with everyday life.

The theatrical performance, also titled They Are Waiting for You (2018), drew on similar thematic elements. Conceived as Prouvost’s first major production for the stage, the show unfolded with complex and humorous stories in which fact and fiction were interwoven, challenging conventions on how we shape our life histories. The result was an experimental mash-up of video work, dance, immersive stage décor, and choral music. For this project Prouvost was joined by artist Sam Belinfante, dance artist and choreographer Pierre Droulers, percussionist Eli Keszler, and additional musicians and performers from Minnesota and New York. Following the exhibition and performance, the Walker acquired DIT LEARN (2017)—the video work that anchored both gallery and stage projects—for the collection.

Jason Moran

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A focus on the work of the jazz pianist, composer, and interdisciplinary artist Jason Moran (US, b. 1975) led to a multipart presentation that included commissions, an exhibition with a national tour and catalogue, a series of concerts, a large-scale performance premiere, and support for the artist’s new digital publication on jazz culture. Moran’s experimental approach to art-making embraces the intersections of objects and sound, pushing beyond the traditional staged concert or sculpture and drawing to amplify ways that both are inherently theatrical. The Walker-organized Jason Moran, the artist’s first museum exhibition (April 26–August 26, 2018), featured the range of work Moran has explored, his collaborations with visual artists (including Stan Douglas, Theaster Gates, Joan Jonas, Adrian Piper, and Kara Walker), and his “set” sculptures—homages to iconic jazz venues from the 1920s to the 1970s that also double as stages, or sets, for concerts.

A series of in-gallery performances were presented during the run of the show within Moran’s STAGED: Slugs’ Saloon (2018), a sculptural installation that memorializes the iconic New York jazz club Slugs’ Saloon (operating from 1964–1972). Acquired for the Walker’s collection, the work will continue to be used as a stage for concerts, with musicians invited to perform at the artist’s discretion during his lifetime and afterward, according to determined guidelines. In conjunction with the exhibition, The Last Jazz Fest premiered in the Walker’s McGuire Theater, featuring Moran and his trio the Bandwagon, Taurus Mateen and Nasheet Waits; visual artists Ryan Trecartin and Lizzie Fitch; and Ashland Mines (DJ Total Freedom) (May 18–19, 2018). The Walker-commissioned performance examined various ways that jazz functions—as freedom music, as a model for democracy, and as a prop—while championing Moran’s collaborative impulse. In addition, the inaugural issue of Moran’s music publication LOOP (2016) is now hosted in digital form on the Walker Reader, in cooperation with the artist and Luhring Augustine. The magazine looks at jazz culture from an African American perspective, featuring the voices of the artist, his friends, family, and his many collaborators.

Stage performance, Jason Moran with Ryan Trecartin and Lizzie Fitch: Jazz Fest