Performance and Contemporary Art History: Mapping a Critical Subject, Medium, and Method in a Transdisciplinary Field.

Art history has long maintained an ambivalent relationship with performance. As an ephemeral, body- and time-based practice —emerging in the late 1950s and including forms such as New Dance, Body and Action Art, Performance Art, participatory or activist performances-contemporary performance continues to elude its categorization. This provokes us to reflect on and expand art history's established methods and canons.

The conference approaches performance by looking beyond the disciplinary position of the visual arts, whose genealogies have primarily focused on objects and images. It brings together contributions situated in art history, theatre, and dance studies which explore understudied and new subjects or methodological foci. Over two days, the event will provide insights into contemporary forms of performance from the late 20th and 21st centuries that respond to art's increasing situatedness within the neoliberal logics of reproduction and visibility, as well as the oft-cited multiple crises of the twenty-first century.

PROGRAMME

FRIDAY, 6 NOVEMBER 2026

9:00–9:45 Registration and Welcome Coffee

9:45–10:00
Welcome, Dr. Johan F. Hartle, Rector of Academy of Fine Arts Vienna

Introduction, Lisa Beißwanger & Lisa Moravec

10:00–11:15
Panel 1: (Inter-)Disciplinary Entanglements / The Art Historian is Present
Moderation: Lisa Beißwanger

Adam Czirak, University of Vienna
Denkfiguren der Performance: Performance-theoretische Konzepte in der Kunstgeschichte

Sophie Delpeux, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (HICSA)
Remain Alert: How Performance Shapes its Historian

Clara Wörsdörfer, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz / University of Koblenz
Bloß ein Fingerzeig? Notes on Ekphrasis and Performance

11:15–11:45
Coffee Break

11:45–13:00 Uhr
Panel 2: Economies of Performance
Moderation: Sabeth Buchmann

Kirsten Maar, Freie Universität Berlin
Choreographing Practices of the Not-Yet

Rachel Mader & Siri Peyer, Lucerne School of Design, Film and Art
Economics of Performance Art

Storm Møller Madsen & Elias Ståhl, University of Copenhagen & University of Basel
A Trans Body at Work in the Art Institution

13:00–14:30
Lunch Break

14:30–15:30
Keynote I
Moderation: Lisa Moravec
Christian Grüny, University of Music and Performing Arts Stuttgart
Regarding Bodies: Starting Points, Intersections, Divergences in Performance

15:30–15:45
Coffee Break

15:45–17:00
Panel 3: Politics of Performance
Moderation: Shirin Graf

Johanna Hilari, University of Bern
Choreography and Performance: The Relation of Migration and Body Techniques

Rachel Augusto, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna
The Tide Is Full: Performativity, Necropolitics and the Living Archive of Resistance

Lora Sariaslan, Utrecht University
Embodied Cartographies: Performing Mobility and Belonging in Vienna

17:00–17:15
Coffee Break

17:15–18:30
Panel 4: Bodily Matters and the Digital Realm
Moderator: Lisa Moravec

Sonya Merutka, Princeton University
Rephotography as Performance Archaeology: Ana Mendieta’s Site-Specificity

René G. Cepeda, New Media Caucus
Performance in a Digital World

Hyeji Nam, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna
MANSHIN: Ritual Mobility and the Post-Digital Body

FRIDAY, 6 NOVEMBER 2026

10:00–11:15
Panel 5: Archives and the Canon
Moderation: Felicitas Thun-Hohenstein

Małgorzata Kaźmierczak, University of National Education Commission, Krákow
Cycles of Resistance: Performance Art in South America and Eastern Europe during the Times of Political Transformation

Isabella Krayer, University of Zurich
Under the Radar? Methods and Practices of Artistically Accumulated Performance Art Archives: The Black Kit / Die Schwarze Lade, Germany (1981–)

Josephine Leask, Royal Central School of Speech Drama (University of London)
Framing New Dance Magazine: Experimental Dance, Feminist Print culture and Criticism

11:15–11:30
Coffee Break

11:30–12:30
Keynote II
Moderation: Lisa Beißwanger
Barbara Clausen, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) / Städelschule Frankfurt
structural_flex: Exhibiting Tanya Lukin Linklater at the Portikus Frankfurt

12:30–13:45 Uhr
Lunch Break

13:45–15:00
Panel 6: Institutions and the Audience
Moderation: Lisa Beißwanger

Linus Gratte, Centre Pompidou, Paris
“I am ashamed of these young people, but most of all I’m ashamed of myself”: Channeling Public Participation and Protest in Centre Pompidou’s Performance Program of the Late 1970s

Emmanuel Cohen, The New School | Parsons Paris
Disordering Creation: on Claire Bishop’s Grey Zone and its Limits

Jana Bernhardt, University of Münster
Unwelcome Guests: Rethinking Participation Through the Politics of Hospitality

15:00–15:15
Raphael Sbrzesny, Hochschule für Musik Basel FHNW
What Remained of the Second Body - a performative intervention -

15:15–15:30
Coffee Break

15:30–17:00
Panel 7: Performance Intermedia
Moderation: Lisa Moravec

Franziska Solte, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Performing the Artwork as Code: Guy de Cointet and Art Historiographies of the 1970s

Rike Zöllner, Offenbach University of Art and Design
From Body to Garment: Tracing the Agency of Costume in Performance Art

Dominik Eckel, Heidelberg University
Performative Make-up: Drag as a Connecting Point Between Painting, Performance, and Art History

Alexandra Kolb, University of Roehampton, London
Choreographing inflatables: Pneumatic objects in contemporary visual arts and dance

16:45
Final Discussion

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Complementary Event

18:30
Book Launch: Gina Pane. Actions Through Time
Sophie Delpeux, Alice Maude-Roxby with Stefanie Seibold

Galerie Krinzinger, Seilerstätte 16 Mezzanin 1010 Wien, Austria
The event is co-organised by Stefanie Seibold, who is a key contributor within the book, and takes place at Galerie Krinzinger.

The gallery´s founding director Ursula Krinzinger played a pivotal role in the career of Gina Pane through presenting her actions and works in Austria since the 1970s. During the 1970s Gina Pane (1939-1990, Italy/France) was well known for a series of live actions that took place in domestic spaces and galleries in Europe. Pane’s actions were meticulously orchestrated to communicate viscerally and visually, often putting her body at risk and marking an indelible exchange between herself and the viewer. Our anthology is the result of three years of close collaboration-our aim being both to show evolution in the perception of Gina Pane’s actions over the fifty years since the live performances took place, and the extreme diversity within that perception. Alongside writings and interviews by Gina Pane, the anthology includes multiple perspectives from writers, to historians, from curators and exhibition producers to artists who witnessed the actions in the 1970s, to those re-encountering the works through re-enactments in the present. Many of the documents in the book are translated and published in English
for the first time thus making Gina Pane’s work accessible to a wider audience worldwide. Our ambition with this Routledge publication is to make it clear that Gina Pane’s actions were addressed to the collective and that a collective is necessary to take them on.

The event includes a slide presentation with time for q&a, followed by a drinks reception.