There's no doubt about it: performance art is everywhere these days. From the American pavilion at the Venice Biennale and blockbuster shows — once unthinkable — at MoMA and the Guggenheim to the stage of the Academy Awards and even the political discourse, the medium that once represented art's most alien, impenetrable fringe has broken into the mainstream consciousness in a big way. This we owe primarily to RoseLee Goldberg and her Performa biennial, the buzzy, trend-setting celebration of performance art that is now once again scattered across New York City for its fourth edition. To understand the phenomenon, ARTINFO spoke to the Performa founder and art historian about how she has worked to make this form of art-making more accessible, how it relates to radical politics, and why the rise of performance art is only just beginning.

Performance art has been such an integral part of the avant-garde for generations, but it’s really been in the last few years that has become truly popular in a literal sense. It's gotten to the point where the Wall Street Journal called the charismatic GOP hopeful Chris Christie a performance artist in a headline. How did this happen?

It is interesting, that kind of language. That happened at the end of the ‘80s, too, in a way — there was a lot of public conversation about performance artists and this business of everything being about performance art. But I really think this new wave goes back to Performa 05, when we had Marina Abramovic doing "Seven Easy Pieces" at the Guggeneheim. I think the build from then to now has been very interesting. From the beginning, the intention of Performa was to be a very specialized biennial that made it clear that performance is central to the history of art as we know it, and it’s been there for a long time, going back to Leonardo da Vinci, whom the Medici would hire to create a special event when they had a wedding, and the pageants of Rome. So, that’s been my life’s work, what I’ve been trying to explain — that this has been there all along.

I think what 05 showed was that there was a whole new wave of performance, a new route performance could take. It certainly made performance more accessible, because I think performance art is still mostly political, so it’s very difficult, it’s problematic — it’s really brought up in the '60's vein where people are cutting themselves, Chris Burden is shooting himself in the arm, or very radical feminist issues are at play, or radical minority issues, and so on. I think what Performa did was suddenly say, let’s dream up another kind of artist performance, and let’s give visual artists who maybe have never made this kind of work before a chance to create something extraordinary that is the equivalent of beautiful work that we are seeing in galleries and museums, and not backwards-looking material that seems to be getting further and further in the corner in a way and being very much about ‘70s and ‘80s and so on.

Was there anything in the times or the cultural currents that allowed performance art to strike such a nerve?

The marketplace was at such a huge height in 2004, when I decided to start Performa, that I wanted to get back to a discussion about art and ideas and where the art is made. I think we are all getting pushed into the area of discussing the art market and the excitement and the gigantism of that market, so I think that what struck a nerve with a lot of younger artists was the chance to be excited again to have ideas to talk about and not to feel intimidated by what the marketplace said about being an artist. It’s hard enough to be an artist anyway, but in 2004 and everything was being measured by such a dramatic scale of success. I think performance allowed everybody to get back to talking about ideas again. As a historian I think there were a couple other issues at play, one of them being the fact that the '70s are now really history, and any museum timeline now has to cope with the '70s. The '60s are Minimalism and Pop art, but what do you put in the rooms that represent the '70s? Is that conceptual art? Do we leave them empty? Then curators finally recognized that what’s interesting in the ‘70s is that there there was so much performance going on. It was Joan Jonas, it was Carolee Schneemann, it was Dennis Oppenheim. So history’s been catching up with the museums themselves, and because much ‘70s work was performance it needed its own historical place in the museum

I think it’s so interesting how performance art kind of had its comeback at a time when the music industry has really been struggling. In the realm of museum benefits and art parties, you’re more likely to have a performance artist appear these days than a band. I personally find that to be very attractive about performance art because it’s a way of being in the moment, being in a live experience that feels communal.

The great thing too about performance is this idea of being accessible, which almost seems paradoxical because some of these works are not quite easy to grasp. But what’s accessible is the human body in a narrative. You can have all kinds of people sitting there watching Tino Sehgal and having things to say about it. They didn’t need to have a good understanding of conceptual art or the other references that he might be making, they could have an experience and talk about it so that immediately. As you said, it’s about being in the moment, having an experience, and saying, “That’s interesting, I’ve never dealt with that before” and so on. I think the immediacy of the experience itself does create a lot of conversation, a lot of content, it makes you think, which is what art does — it makes you change your perception of the world.

I think also the new museum of the 21st century is a very important part, too. Museums now are actually building performance art departments, rebuilding performance spaces — the Modern now is opening its new performance space, and, at the Whitney, apparently all the floors will have room for performance. Each museum is now making dedicated spaces so we’re actually only going to see more performance, because all of these spaces are going to have to be filled. And in fact, back to your point about music, I see performance as a very strong medium in the 21st century, because of the spontaneity of performance and the way you can use bits of sound, you can use bits of video, you can use all kinds of technology, and you can create environments that are both real and virtual. The complexity of what you can do allows you to talk about a very complex, layered, and fast moving world that we’re living in. I think it’s only going to gather more and more momentum and be more critically understood and have more of it’s history studied.

So what changed between 2009 and this year’s biennial?

You know, we’re the only biennial that actually has a consistent group of curators each year, so it’s not like another kind of biennial where you might say, “Oh, this year we’re going to have this format.” Instead we can build ideas over time, cumulatively, and that if somebody doesn’t feel quite ready for one year we can move it to the next edition, and an idea can really grow over time. So it’s a very different way of thinking about a biennial. But whereas last year was the 100th anniversary of Futurism, this year we’re looking at Russian Constructivism as the historical anchor, because I really want the different parts of this history to be fully understood. It’s a chance to think about what was going on in Russia in the ‘20s, what was constructed, what was the role of the artist, what was the role of performance, what was the relationship of the artist to theater, to film, to music, to poetry, and to language on the page, so all of those things will interact. We have this wonderful Russian Constructivist reader, and it’s fascinating to watch the artists respond to that. They don’t have to or not — it’s just there. But I think artists enjoy this other level of conversation that’s not just about the event, and so the Russian Constructivists theme has been very strong, which then also led us to think about language and translation and the difference of words as used in theater or words used in performance or words used in comedy. So, a lot of these concepts sort of you won’t necessarily notice it right away if you look at the program, but that’s the thinking behind it.

We also have placed even more emphasis on education, which is an area I really wanted to grow. We were given the school that’s on Mott Street and Prince and we turned that into our Performa hub this year as a school for artists and the public, where they’ll actually have a chance to have a lesson by an artist. It’s not a lecture, it’s not a panel discussion, but it’s actually a lesson. When you’re at the school you walk into the classroom and somebody teaches you an idea for the day or the lesson for the week. I guess that’s the one nostalgic part for me. I came to New York in the ‘70s and that daily conversation over breakfast, over lunch, hanging out and going to the Kitchen, to CBGB’s — we were all talking about this world of ideas in these places, and this was a way for me to say no, we’ve got to hold on to that idea again of New York belonging to the creative community and having opportunities to talk.

In 2001, you famously commissioned Shirin Neshat to create her first performance piece, an experience that led you to start Performa. This year she’s coming back, and many artists are taking their first plunges into performance art. How do you convince them to take the risk? What’s your pitch?

Sometimes it can be a slow process. I might say to somebody, “Whenever you’re ready, I would just be so intrigued to talk to you about doing something,” and that’s how people have come back to me. You know, as with Shirin, from day one it was rather watching the work and imagining what would it be like if this came to life. Somehow, this fantasy of my own, about, “Imagine if these people stepped out of the film,” appeals to artists — to allow them to spend that kind of time with the work. And it doesn’t take very much convincing. I put it to Shirin and she said yes, very soon. She said that she also needed to be terrified sometimes, that she liked that edge of having to push her work in ways that maybe she wouldn’t do on her own. She also like that it could actually bring in a larger audience that might not get the work in its pristine art-world exhibition form.

I think each artist has something different to say about what happens when you’re looking at the audience. I remember Shirin talking about eye contact. I remember another artist saying that he’d never been able to watch people responding to his work as it occurred, and to actually watch people responding to his work in real time was thrilling and gave him a different understanding of his work. Mika Rottenberg was talking to me the other day how she loved this idea of just being in an experiment — that the whole thing could fail, or not. Failing in public, that excitement of making something when you just don’t know how it’s going to work out, it’s different from finishing the work three weeks before your show and then just putting it out there. So, it’s very interesting listening to each artist talk about what it’s opened up for them. For me, I think it just points to the fact that artists are hugely imaginative creatures, and will take off in entirely new directions if you give them half a chance.

What role do you play in shepherding these projects to fruition? How closely are you involved?

Closely. First, I think that artists who’ve never worked with performance before, they really almost don’t know where to begin. In their own metier, they know what to do, but you could just ask an artist, “Ok, what is your budget?” They don’t know where to begin with a budget in performance, for example, so these are the practical matters. They haven’t dealt with things like performance rehearsals, they haven’t dealt with things like auditions, they haven’t dealt with things like lighting.

Then there’s the next layer of questions I ask, where I’m really the guinea pig, I’m the audience member. If I’m going to walk into this room, what is it going to feel like when I walk in? What is the room going to look like? Is there going to be sound right away? What kind of feeling do you want people to have? I spent all these years thinking about performance, looking for all these things that did work or didn’t work, and I feel like that’s my role sometimes, to be critical. I feel a huge responsibility to be as careful as possible, as loving as possible, listening to the idea and then helping, just really being there and making sure nothing can go wrong or can fall down, and that everything has been anticipated.

Like a producer?

I guess like a producer, yeah. It’s really doing that in a very hands-on, but also very hands-off, way. Because, obviously, the artist’s idea is paramount. And I will help right from the beginning, finding residencies, making sure they have enough time to rehearse, making sure all these things are in place. So it’s really taking people into this new world, and being there for them in a very strong sense.

With every project? That’s a lot to do.

It’s a lot, but you know, it’s so exciting, because you really get an opportunity to get close to the way an artist is thinking — trying hear how that work can be realized. So it’s thrilling, it’s absolutely thrilling. I couldn’t be more privileged.

Do you ever perform yourself?

No, but I came out of being a dancer a long time ago. As a child in South Africa I did everything from tap dance to ballet, so I know what it feels like, and I also did a fine art degree. I ended up writing about it instead. It’s the classic story.

One of the groups participating this year is Public Movement, an Israeli collective that makes art out of protests, exploring the political and aesthetic possibilities of a group of people acting together. How do you think performance art relates to the current political moment?

I think it’s going to be relating more and more. It’s a very interesting question. People often ask, “What happened to protest in performance?” And the fact is that protest entered performance at a time when the youth movement was protesting against Vietnam, against chauvinism, against racism, against all the different things that were so important in the ‘60s and ‘70s, and so therefore the protest nature of art was also deeply in the social and political milieu. Then in the ‘80s, with AIDS, you had that protest. It was very strongly in the art world because the art world was deeply affect by HIV, but there was also a larger protest movment on.

I would say that in the last ten years or so, even with all the Gulf Wars, there hasn’t been a protest in that way in this country, because actually there haven’t been strong protest movements. Now finally we’re having actions and activities starting to brew, and the art can come out of that environment. And with the protest that’s going on now at Wall Street, there actually needs some good art to articulate some content. Where are the Guerrilla Girls when we need them? Imagine that photo that says, “What do I have to do to get into the Met?” I’m finding that what we’re missing is some really informed and informing slogans to go with the Wall Street protests right now. I’m missing the language, and the visuals. People are making these nice do-it-yourself scribbles, but I’m missing the content. It’s really ripe for some artists, looking at visuals, looking at posters, looking at content, looking at the history, to go back in there and do something. So I think we may well be in for some interesting protest performance art.

Are there any plans to engage the Occupy Wall Street community with Performa?

It’s all happened so fast. Who knows? There’s nothing being done directly, because it has literally happened in the last month.

You have written that “performance has been a way of appealing directly to the larger public, as well as shocking audiences into reassessing their own notions of art and its way into culture,” and also that, “Performance art is the surest means of disrupting a complacent public.” Is it Performa’s agenda to facilitate that?

Not necessarily, I don’t think. I would say that I think art changes the way we see the world, and I think performance does that in a more visceral way. The physical presence of being there with an artist, seeing them in action, changes the way we do things. It’s very different than seeing an exhibition in silence, in a quiet study the way we typically look at static art. So I think it has that capacity. And it provided a vehicle for feminism, for all the different multicultural issues that we’re looking at in ‘80s and ‘90s, entering your mind in a whole different way, in a way you can’t shake. It’s a sort of forced entry. But I don’t think it’s only that. It can also be very quiet and slow. You can make a performance out of anything, and you don’t need permission. The fact is that it allows for material to enter the international art world in a way that would be much more difficult if you were a painter, because maybe then you’d have to contend with the whole Modernist tradition. I think it has this stealth way of getting in to the consciousness of a culture in ways that painting can’t do.

Also, as we look at these larger and larger circles of the world, thinking of the Western art-world centers as we know them, you find that the further you get away, the more performance you find around the edges. In those cultures, whether it’s India, Pakistan, Africa, Kenya, or South Africa, there is less separation in those cultures between painting and dance, or puppetry. Those things are much less contained: the art and the dance and the film. There’s much more of a flow between the disciplines. So again, I think performance allows us to understand those different categories.

Is Performa essentially subversive?

Actually, no, it’s not. It’s about informing. I think the more deeply informed we are about the world around us, the richer we are as human beings. My concern is to reach people and to communicate at the most inspiring level, at the most riveting level, and I think that that’s what art does. And I think there’s work that can be very painful or very difficult for you, but I don’t see that necessarily having a place in the biennial, because the biennial actually assumes a large public, and I want to embrace that public in very profound ways. Not just, “Hey, this is nice and entertaining,” but “this is important for you to think about. This is an important idea.” What Shirin Neshat is doing for Performa, or what iona rozeal brown is talking about with African American culture versus kabuki, and what the kabuki stories mean — these are profound human, humanist concerns.

I think performance can be subversive, but Performa as an entity is about tying everybody together, gathering them around, and saying, “This work can talk to us in extraordinary ways, and make us better human beings,” and that’s not subversive. It's about seducing, in a way. I want to show you beautiful work that tells you a story that’ll stay with you.

So Chris Burden’s “Shoot” piece wouldn’t have a place in Performa?

It does have a place in the history, but he doesn’t need Performa or anybody else. That kind of work will happen anyway, and it’ll come up again, but that was part of a period. And that work will go on anyway. It’s very different once you’re constructing a series of ideas. It’s like writing a book. Is a book subversive? You want to inform people. You want to make them think. You want to make them realize these things they didn’t know about before. And, as I said, you want to inspire them. You want to make them feel like things are possible to make this world special. To grow up in South Africa is to know that there are certain things that need to be subversive, but in this environment you’re really gathering ideas together.

In bringing performance art to the fore, Performa has transformed it from an activity for art insiders, as it was in its ‘70s New York heyday, to being something that can be consumed citywide by a much broader spectrum of people. Performances in Performa are not only one-time events but in some cases can appear as extended runs with as many as two stagings a night. It’s a real revolution in performance art, and it makes it much more professionalized. Is there an effect that this has on the work?

It may seem that way, but it’s actually still much more unsettled than that. Even if you’re trying to get it to that opening night, or doing three or four presentations of it, it’s experimental even to that last minute. It’s very different, say, from the theater, where you have a script, and you have a director, and you have all these different division of labor, and the people rehearse for two months. The artist isn’t stopping to do that. So we’re still presenting work that is very precarious. You wouldn’t even know how precarious. You wouldn’t want to know. In a sense the professionalism is really taking care of the audience, and making sure that they’re in an environment that will make the transmission of ideas more pleasurable, that it will communicate with them. But the final result remains truly and deeply experimental, which is also what makes it thrilling. And, for me, it’s reaching more people for the right reasons, not because it’s being simplified. It’s not being rehearsed, with all the spontaneity rehearsed out of the work.

Because of the sheer quantity of offerings, it’s a challenge to see everything that you want to see during Performa. Is there a strategy that you would recommend?

Don’t try to see everything. Maybe you love opera, and you hear that Ragnar Kjartansson is doing this 12-hour-long song that might make you rethink opera. So stick with that, and don’t try to see three things that night. Just enjoy that. I mean, I’m the guinea pig, so I do try to see everything, and it’s quite a marathon. But it’s also designed so that you almost could see one or two things a night, so that if you missed an opening one night somewhere.

What is the future of Performa? Is there a plan to branch out beyond the biennial at any time?

The very fun part about just starting a biennial is that we don’t come with a mission. We don’t have 100 years of just doing it in the garden in Venice. There are no rules. It can be whatever we want it to be. Next time there can be more architecture, or more film. We’ll just constantly be changing. And we have no building, so we don’t have to stay in one place. Last year we took the “Hundred Years” show, which I co-curated with Klaus Biesenbach, to Moscow, and this year we’re actually bringing some of that work back here. It’s going to be in Boston this year, and we’re looking to probably take it to Australia, and a couple of other places that want to see that. So we’re touring exhibitions, and we’re a think tank for all kinds of new ways of thinking about culture.