Join us at Spike Art Quarterly to celebrate the Berlin launch of Para Site’s new book “Is the Living Body the Last Thing Left Alive? The New Performance Turn, Its Histories and Its Institutions.” The evening will feature a conversation with editors and contributors, including Cosmin Costinas, Inti Guerrero, Ana Janevski, Ruth Noack, Manuel Pelmus, David Riff, Marten Spangberg, moderated by Joanna Warsza.

The book, co-published with Sternberg Press and designed by Wkshps, New York, is expanded from the 2014 eponymous conference organised by Para Site, and is dedicated to the renewed encounter between dance and performance and the institutions of global contemporary art. Taking Hong Kong as a vantage point, this publication highlights recent efforts of art historians in different parts of the globe to retrace performance genealogies, exploring how non-Western histories of performance have been recuperated, translated, integrated, or excluded from the new institutional realities of contemporary art. The book includes commissioned essays and conversations by André Lepecki, Bojana Cvejić, Claire Bishop, Catherine Wood, Xavier Le Roy, Boris Buden, Amy Cheng, Fernanda Nogueira, Miguel A. López, Nelly Richard, Inti Guerrero, Anthony Yung, Carol Yinghua Lu, Goran Sergej Pristaš, Ruth Noack, Adrienne Edwards, Simon Soon, Patrick D. Flores, David Riff, and Mårten Spångberg, as well as inserts by eleven artists and groups including Firenze Lai, Simryn Gill, Belkis Ayón, Rabih Mroué, Tetsuya Ishida, Emily Roysdon, Manuel Pelmuș, Yangjiang Group, Eisa Jocson, Victoria Lomasko, and Gauri Gill. “Is the Living Body the Last Thing Left Alive?” proposes that a “new performance turn” has emerged and looks at its correlations with other shifts in practices, discourses, and broader society. The book is edited by Cosmin Costinas and Ana Janevski.

ISBN 978-3-95679-118-5
February 2018, English
22 x 28 cm, 240 pages, colour ill., hardcover

This publication would not have been possible without the generous support from the Robert H. N. Ho Foundation.