Being Contemporary

Robert Wilson is a director, designer, and visual artist working in theatre, opera, video, and installation. He has been honored with the Golden Lion for sculpture from the Venice Biennale, the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize for Lifetime Achievement, a nomination for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama, the National Design Award for Lifetime Achievement, and as Commandeur dans l'Ordre des Arts et Lettres by the French government. In 1992, he founded The Watermill Center: A Laboratory for Performance in Southampton, New York.

Charles Bernstein is author of Attack of the Difficult Poems: Essays & Inventions, All the Whiskey in Heaven: Selected Poems, Blind Witness: Three American Operas; Girly Man, and My Way: Speeches and Poems. He teaches at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is co-director of PennSound. http://www.writing.upenn.edu/pennsound

Roselee Goldberg is an art historian, critic, and curator, whose book Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present, first published in 1979, pioneered the study of performance art. In 2004 she founded Performa, a non-profit arts organization that launched America's first performance biennial in 2005.

Brennan Gerard, founder and co-director of Moving Theater, collaborate to make performances, videos, and installations. Their work has been shown recently at the University of California, Irvine; Park Avenue Armory; and Mount Tremper Arts. Gerard and Kelly attended the Whitney Independent Study Program and are currently in the Interdisciplinary Studio MFA program in the UCLA Department of Art. Danspace Project presented their new work, Reusable Parts/Endless Love, in November 2011.

Ryan Kelly, founder and co-director of Moving Theater, collaborate to make performances, videos, and installations. Their work has been shown recently at the University of California, Irvine; Park Avenue Armory; and Mount Tremper Arts. Gerard and Kelly attended the Whitney Independent Study Program and are currently in the Interdisciplinary Studio MFA program in the UCLA Department of Art. Danspace Project presented their new work, Reusable Parts/Endless Love, in November 2011.

Angel Nevarez is based in New York City. Their current projects investigate contemporary music, dissent, and public fora, and move between the spatial simultaneity of performance and enunciation, reflecting upon the projection of political agency through transmission and song. Nevarez and Tevere's works have been exhibited and performed internationally, including Manifesta 8 in Spain, Henie Onstad Art Centre in Norway, and the New Museum and Creative Time in New York. From 2001 to 2008 Nevarez and Tevere worked under the collaborative name neuroTransmitter. http://www.nevareztevere.info

Valerie Tevere is based in New York City. Their current projects investigate contemporary music, dissent, and public fora, and move between the spatial simultaneity of performance and enunciation, reflecting upon the projection of political agency through transmission and song. Nevarez and Tevere's works have been exhibited and performed internationally, including Manifesta 8 in Spain, Henie Onstad Art Centre in Norway, and the New Museum and Creative Time in New York. From 2001 to 2008 Nevarez and Tevere worked under the collaborative name neuroTransmitter. http://www.nevareztevere.info

Kenneth Collins is a playwright, director, and designer living in New York City. He is the founder and artistic director of Temporary Distortion, a genre-bending multimedia performance group with a reputation for pushing the boundaries of theatre.

Linda Weintraub is an artist, author, curator, and educator whose next book, Eco Art In Pursuit of a Sustainable Planet, will be published by the University of California Press in 2012.

Robert Lyons is a playwright, director, and artistic director of the two-time OBIE Award-winning Soho Think Tank @ the Ohio Theatre. His most recent play, Nostradamus Predicts the Death of Soho, was the final production of the Ohio Theatre in its former SoHo location (now reopened in the West Village as Ohio West). He is also artistic director of the Sarah Lawrence College theatre program.

Nicky Paraiso, currently Programming Director for The Club at La MaMa and co-curator for La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival, has been a downtown mainstay for the last several decades, whether as a champion and presenter of other artists' work or presenting his own solos.

Jovana Stokić, a Belgrade-born, New York-based art historian and critic, holds a PhD from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University. She is curator of performance art for the Abramovic Studio, at Location One, New York, and also contributed an essay for Marina Abramovic's MoMA exhibition catalogue.

Sandra Skurvida is an independent curator, scholar, and a lecturer at the School of Visual Arts, The New School, and the Fashion Institute of Technology Her research and practice in contemporary art and theory is currently focused on the post-war period, particularly John Cage and his interdisciplinary circle.

Joshua Abrams is assistant editor of PAJ. They teach in the department of drama, theatre, and performance studies at Roehampton University, London. Abrams served as vice president of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education's recent twenty-fifth anniversary convention in Chicago. Parker-Starbuck is the author of the new book Cyborg Theatre: Corporeal/Technological Intersections in Multimedia Performance.

Jennifer Parker-Starbuck is assistant editor of PAJ. They teach in the department of drama, theatre, and performance studies at Roehampton University, London. Abrams served as vice president of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education's recent twenty-fifth anniversary convention in Chicago. Parker-Starbuck is the author of the new book Cyborg Theatre: Corporeal/Technological Intersections in Multimedia Performance.

Eleanor Antin works in photography, video, film, performance, installation, drawing, and writing. As a performance artist she has performed in theatres, museums, galleries, and universities around the world, including the Venice Biennale, Documenta 12, Sydney Opera House, Ford's Theatre, Whitney Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Portland Art Museum, La Mamelle, Arnolfini, Women's Building, and Franklin Furnace.

Richard Schechner is a theatre director, performance theorist, professor, writer, and editor.