George Kan
George Kan is an artist, writer, and performance maker from London, now based in New York. They are a PhD candidate in Performance Studies at NYU.
Curating Brexit
By George KanIn January of 1973, Great Britain joined the European Union after its third petition for membership. The event inspired an array of celebrations entitled “Fanfare for Europe.”
Joseph E. Yoakum: What I Saw
By George KanAcross this exhibition’s unprecedented gathering of works, Yoakum’s unique visual language becomes apparent. A vocabulary of parallel lines, doubled lines and tessellated organic shapes dovetail, merge and proliferate below skies of blue and faded peach.
Minoru Yoshida: Performance in New York
By George KanIt isn’t often that new works emerge from the depths of artists’ archives, but when they do, viewers are offered new perspectives on an artist’s work. This is the case with never-before exhibited video documentations of Minoru Yoshida’s New York performances, at Ulterior Gallery.
Miguel Gutierrez’s This Bridge Called My Ass
By George KanMiguel Gutierrez pulls down his underwear with critical intent. Focused and assured, he turns to the left with one yank, and then to the right, before re-joining the orgy of bodies, clothes, and fabric that dominate the stage.
Rehearsed Formulas: Momix and Loïe Fuller
By George KanThe dancers slowly grow and unfurl upward before proceeding to spring around the stage to evoke the movement of the flowers.
Ligia Lewis: Water Will (in Melody)
By George KanThe black curtains form a dark wall across the proscenium assembled at Performance Space. Green and yellow lighting washes through the haze above the audience. We hear the ribbit of frogs, the buzz of crickets, and the swampy whir of the nocturnal.
In Conversation
ITA SEGEV with George Kan
By George Kan"To perform as a trans person—it’s like: why be stared at by a group of people after experiencing that all day in the street? But there’s a deep desire to be seen—which is different from a desire to be watched."
Simulations: Living Sculptures on the Public Stage
By George KanDrawing on Minimalism’s entwining of sculpture and performance, Ximena Garnica and Shige Moriya’s performance-based public artwork, Correspondences, confronts the passersby at Astor Place.
How Do We Stage a World?
By George KanIn a new choreographic reconfiguring of the operatic chorus, Sun & Sea by Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė, Vaiva Grainytė, and Lina Lapelytė, represents an innovative staging of our current world.
Voguing Bauhaus
By George KanPart of Performa 2019, which has taken the Bauhaus School as its theme, the festival commissioned (Untitled) The Black Act in partnership with the work’s venue, Performance Space, to explore the parallels between the 1920s German art school and the voguing practices of late 20th century New York ballroom culture.
In Conversation
MELATI SURYODARMO with George Kan
The superstar performance artist, Melati Suryodarmo, returns to New York next month to perform Eins und Eins (2016) at The Armory Show. The piece uses the human body as a metaphor for a nation’s health and involves the spewing of black ink. Having been trained by Marina Abramović and Anzu Furukawa, Suryodarmo combines butoh practices with western performance art, merging her Indonesian origins with her time in Germany.
Dancing Alone
By George KanA specialist in self-portraiture, who often works with masks, Gillian Wearing has always been invested in that barrier between the private and the public. Here, she’s severed, superimposed. Her flailing arms, her private dance, detached from passing crowds. The Peckham public barely regards her—and she jiggles on regardless.
Choreographing “Lines of Flight”
By George KanCenter-stage on all fours, atop a kind of inflatable mattress, she thrusts her hips in slow twerking movements. Her pink lipstick matches the sides of the inflatable. The stage is a pale grey. To a gently spoken soundtrack, she simultaneously lip-syncs: “18 year old ass, 18 school girls, 18 amateur, 18 and confused, 100 percent neoliberal.”
Crossing the Line: Jérôme Bel's Isadora Duncan
By George KanCatherine Gallant stands on the bare stage of the French Institute: Alliance Française (FIAF). For the next hour, she will address the audience, like a tour guide, introducing, demonstrating, and teaching the dances of Isadora Duncan.
Touch Without Touching
By George KanDance is often assumed to take place in a singular delineated space with specific bodies and specific movements. But these assumptions limit our understanding. Works such as these reveal that we can also dance with those not physically there beside us.
