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.

Originally from New York, Malik Nashad Sharpe is an artist and choreographer now based in London, working across theater, performance, fashion, music, and dance under the alias Marikiscrycrycry. His latest solo work, Goner, mines the genre of horror to question the conditions, pressures, and expectations that shape the performing body along lines of race, sexuality, and commodification.
Marikiscrycrycry's Goner. Photo: Ralf Hersborg.
In this Romeo and Juliet, we do not find two feuding families, but a clinic where gender is segregated, and sexuality policed. What makes Bourne’s critique of such institutional control astute is the inclusion of the multiple idiosyncrasies that underpin societal attempts to govern sex.
Paris Fitzpatrick, Eve Ngbokota, and Company in Matthew Bourne's Romeo and  Juliet, 2023. Photo: Johan Persson.
Across 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.
Joseph E. Yoakum, Mt Grazian in Maritime Alps near Emonaco Tunnel France and Italy by Tunnel, c. mid-1960s (stamped 1958). Black ballpoint pen, blue felt‑tip pen, and colored pencil on paper, 12 x 19 inches. Photo: Robert Gerhardt.
In 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.
Sun & Sea at Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York, 2021. Photo: Richard Termine.
Drawing 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.
Correspondences by Ximena Garnica and Shige Moriya at Astor Place. Photo: Paula Court.
A 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.
Gillian Wearing, Dancing in Peckham, 1994, color video with sound, © the artist, courtesy Maureen Paley, London.
Dance 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.
Roof Piece Tehran, Performance, 2011. Courtesy: Anahita Razmi
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.
Melati Suryodamo. Photo: Genie Kausto
Part 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.
Untitled, The Black Act, 2019. Pictured: Kia LeBeija. Photo: Paula Court.
Catherine 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.
Catherine Gallant in Jerome Bel's Isadora Duncan. Photo: Elena Olivo.
"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."
Ita Segev. Photo: Genie Kausto. Makeup: Ivelisse Rosado. Styling: Maria Meza. Hair: Evanie Frausto.
In 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.”
Installation view: Ulla von Brandenburg: Sweet Feast, Whitechapel Gallery, 2018. © Whitechapel Gallery. Photo: Stephen White.
The 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.
From left: Jolie Ngemi, Ligia Lewis, Dani Brown in Water Will. Photo: Maria Baranova.
Center-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.”
Alexandra Bachzetsis: Escape Act. US Premiere at Pioneer Works, New York. Credit: © Walter Wlodarczyk
The dancers slowly grow and unfurl upward before proceeding to spring around the stage to evoke the movement of the flowers.
Man ran. Choreography: Moses Pendleton; Prop Design: Michael Curry. Photo: Whitney Browne.
Miguel 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.
Miguel Gutierrez This Bridge Called My Ass at the Chocolate Factory. Photo: Paula Lobo
It 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.
Minoru Yoshida, Synthesizer Jacket #2, 1974. Courtesy Midori Yoshida and Ulterior Gallery. Photographer unknown.

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