For the next three months you are invited to join artists in exploring worlds that extend beyond human perspective, disrupting traditional conceptions of humanity. Rather than positioning human consciousness as the primary source and content of all art making, the contributions to the Posthuman Series often blur distinction between ‘the human’ and its other: namely nature, technology, animals, and gods.
In light of dramatic technological and scientific developments such as artificial intelligence and genetic engineering, the idea of an autonomous human being with agency over the world is rapidly becoming obsolete. Are you really more in charge of your communication than the algorithms and language programs in your smartphone? Is the artificial organ that keeps you alive not a part of your body?
The rebranding process, as the new name indicates, involves an effort to make Performance Space more welcoming to a wider audience. In its grungier former life, which began in 1980 when a group of artists took over an abandoned schoolhouse on First Avenue, the space fostered a certain sense of community, but it didn’t quite scream “come in.”
"If our audience could be a representation of the city, that would be a huge success," she said, noting that downtown dance and theater audiences tend to be predominantly white. But the idea of separate audience-building initiatives doesn’t interest her. "I've been in these meetings about 'Oh, we need to diversify our audience,' and it’s always, 'Let's do a side program' or 'Let's do a community day.' But I don’t want a community day. I want the community to be the main program."
Ms. Schlenzka likened it to “the way that in psychoanalysis, you have to know your past to free yourself to conquer the future.”
Nostalgia, she added, is off limits: “We have this amazing past that in my opinion not enough people know about. But it can drag us down, and that’s a fine line to navigate.”
It begins with an exhibition, marathon reading and more events inspired by the neighborhood’s punk culture of the 1970s and ’80s and in tribute to the postmodern punk writer Kathy Acker, who died in 1997. The space has also commissioned new works from the choreographers Sarah Michelson and Yve Laris Cohen, who will create a site-specific piece for the organization’s new theater.
Other performances include a revival of “Them,” which had its brazen debut at Performance Space 122 in 1986 in response to the AIDS crisis, featuring the choreographer Ishmael Houston-Jones, the guitarist Chris Cochrane and the writer Dennis Cooper.
There are those in theater who are content to make things possible. Derek made them better.
Thousands of artists, and tens of thousands of audience – whether they knew it or not – benefited from the passion, love and care with which he approached getting live performance on stage. This was matched only by the passion for his wife, Mary Rose-Lloyd, his family, his cats, his cooking and the Mets.
He was a mentor and teacher to hundreds of young technicians and artists, a designer, a sparkie wrench head techie of the highest order. Derek raised the bar of what PS122 could do for its artists, and enabled them to create stronger, better work. He pushed us all to be better and to do better. With little equipment and very modest infrastructure he made PS122 somewhere people wanted to work, wanted to create. He said yes to impossible dreams.
Performance Space 122′s current transformative renovation would quite simply not be happening without him. Derek spent the last seven years dreaming of what could be in these new spaces, and was a passionate advocate for the possibilities they offered.
Derek was a true, loyal friend to many. A big, gruff hugger who unashamedly teared up when he saw injustice. Not all will understand this but as we say – he had a heart as big as Phar Lap’s.
We will miss him, and are poorer for his loss.
Derek is a graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne. After 10 years of working with some of Australia’s best experimental theater and dance companies he began touring Australia, China and New York. Shortly after re-locating to the US, he took a position as a technician at Performance Space 122 in 2000, eventually becoming its Director of Production ... Derek has had the great honor of working with the exciting and challenging artists that PS 122 presents, and looks forward to taking PS 122 into the future.
