Last Updated on November 25, 2019
Beta Main’s first commissioned project, Performance Lessons: Suzanne Lacy Teaches Andrea Bowers Performance Art, centers on the profoundly influential trajectory of performance art in California between 1968-1980, reanimating and contextualizing this rich artistic history through durational performance, conversations with practitioners and theorists and inquiry on politics and pedagogy.
Performance Lessons follows the photographic artists’ durational installation at The Drawing Center in New York in 2014, where Andrea Bowers taught Suzanne Lacy how to draw. Using the practice Lacy was foundational in forming, roles are reversed this time and Lacy teaches Bowers how to do performance art. For ten days, the pair will live in Beta Main while Bowers is assigned lessons, develops performances, and undergoes the formal critique process art students endure as part of their education. The lessons, taught by Lacy and other renowned artists, will be free and open to the public.