You had to be there: Performa 05 was a sprawling biennial that encompassed wide range of open-ended mediums

Performa 05, the first biennial of visual art performance, was successfully launched in York, Nov. 3-21, under the oversight of art historian and curator RoseLee Goldberg. Events included live performances, film and video screenings, exhibitions, radio broadcasts, lectures and a symposium, and took place at more than 20 venues scattered around the city, with a concentration on the Lower East Side. Goldberg's timing could not have been better, as the overheated art market has piqued an appetite for endeavors with no saleable commodities. Publicity was ample and events well attended; scheduling and other glitches were accepted as somehow true to the spirit of what can be, after all, an ad hoc medium.

The biennial's official roster included more than 40 events (aside from related performances and exhibitions around town that were not listed on the schedule), some with multiple installments and locations. Goldberg worked in alliance with alternative art spaces, galleries and museums, a bar and an ex-synagogue (home of the Angel Orensanz Foundation), all of which acted (at least) quasi-independently. The site for one of the most ambitious projects, Marina Abramovic's Seven Easy Pieces, for example, was the Guggenheim Museum, where, over seven nights, the artist restaged historical performances by herself and others, and presented a new one [see article this issue]. Curated by the Guggenheim's Nancy Spector, it was listed in Performa 05's schedule as a principal attraction but was also an independent event. Similarly, New York University (where Goldberg has long taught) featured "Not For Sale," a two-day symposium on writing about performance and new media. Performa 05's strategies also involved plugging itself into existing series, such as "Band Nights" (which it launched, at Artists Space), "Scout" (readings at Participant Inc.) and "Personal Archive" (at Anthology Film Archives). Galleries and not-for-profit spaces generously allotted space and time: White Box, for instance, mounted an experimental music and sound exhibition that was the site over three weeks of live installations by, among others, the Internet radio station free103point9, which broadcast from the Chelsea space.

The biennial is the main focus of a non profit organization, also called Performa. It was founded in 2004 by Goldberg, and relied for sponsorship of biennial events on grants, individual contributors and case-by-case funding rather than a single corporate or institutional sponsor The Swiss Institute, supported by an alliance of diplomatic funders, mounted a two-day series of multi-artist, simultaneous live works, called "24-Hour Incidental," while the Consulate General of the Netherlands helped pay for a film retrospective by Bas Jan Ader at Anthology, and the British Council an installation by Carey Young at Paula Cooper. Performa alone commissioned two original works, one by Francis Alys at the Slipper Room, a Lower East Side burlesque bar and cocktail lounge, and the other by Jesper Just, True Love Is Yet to Come, his first opera, at Stephan Weiss Studio in Greenwich Village (where a benefit dinner for Performa 05 was held on opening night; a closing party, co-sponsored by the Village Voice at the live-music venue Bowery Ballroom, also benefited Performa).

Art in America editorial staff members Brian Boucher, David Ebony, Faye Hirsch, Cathy Lebowitz, Leigh Anne Miller, Nancy Princenthal and Constance Wyndham fanned out across Performa 05 events and made some choices. What follows describes a few of the highlights but is by no means an exhaustive survey. To find a complete listing of artists and venues, go to performa-arts.org.--F.H.

Jesper Just, True Love Is Yet to Come, at Stephan Weiss Studio

Performa 05 commissioned this multi-media opera by the young Danish artist Jesper Just, his first live endeavor. He collaborated with Vision3, an imaging company whose new software program, called Eyeliner, allows the interaction of onstage performers with hologramlike, 3-D projections. Starring Norwegian film and TV star Baard Owe, who appeared live, and, in the projected images, Johannes Lilleore, a Danish actor whom Just features in nearly all his short films [see article this issue], the 30-minute opera traced the fruitless pursuit of a young man by an older one who perishes in the end. Also putting in a brief appearance, in projection, was the Finnish Screaming Men's Choir, a performance ensemble whose members declaim lyrics at the tops of their lungs. Much of the footage for the projections was taken from a trilogy of films that Just is in the process of completing.

Following his usual method, Just organized the work around sentimental oldies, which Owe here sang in a heartfelt, deliberately unpolished manner. Each segment of the opera corresponded to one of the songs, opening with "Whispering Grass," which Owe addressed to an oversize, three-dimensional projection of Lilleore, who vanished when embraced, and closing with "Cry Me a River," in which Owe, himself becoming (at least partially) virtual, tumbled through a watery cascade to meet his death. In between we saw him pursuing his elusive love-object in a variety of settings, the most surreal of which was an antique merry-go-round from Copenhagen's Tivoli Gardens, looking quite spectral in the vaporous grisaille of the imaging program. Each of the men was mounted on a carousel horse way too small for him, engaging in a low-speed "chase" destined to fail from the start. The climax ("You Always Hurt the One You Love") had Owe on his knees being chastised by a circle of screaming Finns dressed in white suits and repeatedly shouting, "You always hurt! You always hurt!" Above, Lilleore's lovely face materialized among drifting blossoms, in keeping with the lyrics ("You always take the sweetest rose/ And crush it till the petals fall").