Sondra Perry, Lineage for a Multiple-Monitor Workstation: Number One, 2015. Performance view, Serpentine Pavilion, London, June 10, 2016. Sondra Perry. Photo: Lewis Ronald.
“I AM GOING THROUGH HARD TIMES,” Sondra Perry intoned, introducing a live presentation of her 2015 video Lineage for a Multiple-Monitor Workstation: Number One this past June in London at the Serpentine Pavilion. Perry was reciting a statement Yvonne Rainer had famously written for the Museum of Modern Art’s 1970 exhibition “Information.” “In the shadow of real recent converging,” Perry continued with a faltering voice,“formalized choreographic gestures seem trivial.” Rainer’s declaration, penned forty-six years ago, presciently articulates the particular challenges that choreographers, performance artists, participants (willing and unwitting), and curators face in this moment. What can art offer when the most significant performances—political rallies stained by violence, Black Lives Matter protests—are occurring in the street? Yet given its inherent temporality and
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