Online and live program dedicated to performance in San Francisco during the 2018 winter season
Open Space, SFMOMA’s contemporary arts and culture interdisciplinary platform, is pleased to announce “Limited Edition,” an online and live program dedicated to performance in San Francisco during the 2018 winter season. The result of an unprecedented partnership between CounterPulse, ODC Theater, Performance at SFMOMA, The Lab and Z Space, “Limited Edition” builds on Open Space’s history of collaborative, place-based explorations. As sites for well-resourced arts writing continue to be imperiled, and as vital independent arts spaces struggle to stay afloat in the face of rapid gentrification and decreased arts funding, “Limited Edition” seeks to address a crucial need for the creation of smart context around contemporary culture.
“Interdisciplinary collaboration is at the heart of Open Space, along with a commitment to supporting diverse voices and approaches,” says Editor-in-Chief Claudia La Rocco. “We’re excited to be working with these vibrant organizations, as they incubate and present contemporary work. So much of what we know of performances from past decades comes from first-hand accounts; Open Space is honored to commission new writing on the live work of our time and place.”
The theme of this year’s “Limited Edition” is “Forward-Looking Lineages”:
Artists and institutions intent on interrogating the present moment are also, inevitably, interrogating the past. Among many other things, “contemporary performance” is a set of traditions, enriched and bedeviled by questions of ownership, of legacy, of the authentic and the appropriated. Open Space will explore these questions through the work produced and supported by a cohort of San Francisco organizations; over the course of roughly three months, this collaboration will yield performances, discussions and gatherings at various locations throughout the city, with commissioned texts and other works appearing regularly on Open Space.
“Limited Edition” will kick off January 11–13 with the premiere of Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener’s site-specific, improvisational work DESIRE LINES: RETROFIT at SFMOMA, unfolding during Robert Rauschenberg: Erasing the Rules, a retrospective highlighting collaborative and interdisciplinary aspects of Rauschenberg’s practice, which was part of the inspiration for “Limited Edition.” “Limited Edition” will be anchored by two extended live “moments” across the five organizations, featuring local premieres and commissions of new work by artists from the Bay Area and across the country. More detailed information can be found at openspace.sfmoma.org/limited-edition.
Highlights include:
February 14–24
The Lab’s site-specific series at the 16th Street BART plaza
Performances by Cori Olinghouse and Netta Yerushalmy at ODC Theater
Word for Word’s production of Lucia Berlin: Stories at Z Space
March 12–18
The inaugural CounterPulse Festival
Premieres by Michelle Handelman and BodyCartography Project at SFMOMA
These performances will be extended through discursive events created in partnership with Open Space, as well as analytical, artistic and critical pieces by artists, writers and thinkers, published at openspace.sfmoma.org/series/limited_edition. Contributors include choreographer and dancer Gerald Casel, writer and historian Megan Metcalf and curator and producer Meiyin Wang.
