The artist Yve Laris Cohen installed and performed his work, Studio/Theater, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in the fall of 2022. Using the charred and twisted remains of the Doris Duke Theatre, destroyed during a fire at the dance center Jacob’s Pillow (Becket, MA), Laris Cohen created a kinetic sculpture and architectural installation for the museum’s performance studio. In a series of alternating performances, Preservation and Conservation, the artist set the sculpture in motion while conversing with performers in a series of interviews. The Preservation cast included the Jacob’s Pillow archivist, a former director of the center, and the architect of the burned building. Preservation explored how choreography and dance performance are recorded and transmitted, and the role of place within history and stewardship. The Conservation cast included conservators Lynda Zycherman, Michele Marincola, and Naomi Kroll Hassebroek; a theater consultant who had worked on the MoMA studio; and a gastroenterologist. Conservation examined material, architectural, and corporeal structure, decay, and stabilization. Over twelve performances, Laris Cohen’s questions (always changing and previously unknown to the performers) teased out intersections between the endeavors of preserving performance, sculpture, buildings, and the human body.
The artist organized a detailed plan for the conservation of the work that reinforced and intertwined with its central themes. The plan included a court reporter (who was also a cast member) recording every performance on an antique stenography machine, transcriptions generated from the steno notes, and the stewardship of the sculptures themselves: massive metal and wood assemblages of architectural fragments. Laris Cohen’s careful plans, however, were upended by a series of events resulting in the loss of some of the components. This talk will present Studio/Theater as considered a year later by its creator and some of its actants. Can a performance be conserved, or (like the damaged structure that this one commemorated) simply be memorialized? What is the relationship between documentation and conservation of a non-material work of art? Do the material components of this work—the sculptural assemblies—have meaning outside of the performance itself? How did the novel role of performer impact the conservators’ professional perspectives? And how does the artist now regard the preservation and conservation of his fragile and complex work of art?
KEYWORDS: performance art, preservation, archives, deterioration, sculpture, architecture
Yve Laris Cohen, "Yve Laris Cohen talks about Studio/Theater," as told to David Velasco, Artforum International 61/3 (November 2022).
Ksenia M. Soboleva, "Performance as Archive: Yve Laris Cohen Interviewed by Ksenia Soboleva," BOMB Magazine, December 13, 2022. https://bombmagazine.org/articles/the-performance-as-archive-yve-laris-cohen-interviewed/
"Pillow Talk: Studio/Theater at MoMA," video, Nel Shelby Productions, September 28, 2022. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LojZTWCcXKk
" 'Studio/Theater' at MoMA with Yve Laris Cohen," PillowVoices: Dance Through Time, with Norton Owen. Podcast, February 25, 2023. https://pillowvoices.org/episodes/studio-theater-at-moma-with-yve-laris-cohen
Michele MARINCOLA is Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Professor of Conservaiton, Institute of Fine Arts, NYU, and holds graduate degrees in art history and conservation from the same institution. Her research interests include the conservation and technical art history of sculpture, as well as the history and ethics of art conservation. She is the editor of a new edition and translation of Johannes Taubert’s Polychrome Sculpture, Meaning, Form, Conservation (Getty Publications, 2015) and is co-author with Lucretia Kargère of The Conservation of Medieval Polychrome Wood Sculpture: History, Theory, Practice (Getty Publications, 2020), which was awarded the 2015 FAIC-Samuel H. Kress Publication Award, the 2023 CAA/FAIC Distinguished Scholarship in Conservation Award, and the 2023 AIC Book Award. Professor Marincola also received the 2021 AIC Sheldon and Carolyn Keck Award for Excellence in Teaching. https://ifa.nyu.edu/people/faculty/marincola.htm
Naomi KROLL HASSEBROEK is a senior conservator with the National Park Service (United States), where she provides technical preservation services to parks as part of the Historic Architecture, Conservation, and Engineering Center. Her research interests include the technology of early architectural concrete in the U.S. and France and the preservation of Cold War civil defense structures. She holds graduate degrees in art history and conservation from New York University. https://www.linkedin.com/in/naomi-kroll-hassebroek-5b99b872/
The artist Yve Laris Cohen installed and performed his work, Studio/Theater, at the Museum of Modern Art in the fall of 2022. Using the remains of the Doris Duke Theatre, destroyed during a fire at the dance center Jacob’s Pillow, Laris Cohen created an installation that he set in motion while conversing with performers. The artist organized a detailed plan for the preservation of the work that reinforced and intertwined with its central themes. The unexpected loss of some components raises broader questions about the conservation and stewardship of performance art that will be explored in this presentation.