Interview: How PS122 Is Going Global
by Alexis Clements
Many of you have been to PS122, or at very least heard of it, given its 30-odd years of presenting performance work by all manner of New York artists, famous, infamous, and fleeting. What you may not be aware of are the big changes afoot over on 9th Street and First Avenue—besides the long-awaited removal of the scaffolding that shrouded the building for 10 years.
For the past five years, PS122's artistic director, Vallejo Gantner, an Aussie by birth and a nomad by choice, has been working to reshape and rethink the way the organization operates. While those working in contemporary performing arts know how many changes have been taking place in the field over the past decade, audiences aren't necessarily as aware of how much the earth is moving beneath them. Gantner's vision for PS122 serves as a striking example of how things are shifting within the performance community, if often by nothing more than the force of will of those who want change to happen. It also serves as a window into the ways that the performance world, not unlike many other businesses, is looking for new models to move forward in an era when nothing can be taken for granted.
I sat down with Gantner at a bar around the corner from the space to chat about one of his organization's newest initiatives, PS122 Global, which launched in late October. Through this new program artists like Richard Maxwell, Reggie Watts, and Young Jean Lee are touring as a group to international venues and festivals, all under the PS122 umbrella. It's a model that Gantner hopes will not only extend the reach of the organization, but also that of the artists who cross its stages.
The L: Where did the idea for PS122 Global come from?Vallejo Gantner: It came from a sense that there was a real lack of exchange between emerging and mid-career artists in the US and their peers internationally. It came from the fact that we are dependent on European Union subsidy in the performance sector and I was frustrated about that. And it came from the fact that a lot of American work does not have the life that it deserves because we do not have the resources or the subsidy to facilitate export.
But, to my knowledge, within a certain group of successful contemporary US performing artists, they make their money abroad, touring or accepting international commissions. And that model has been around for a while. I gather that they take it for granted that they won't be able to make enough money to support themselves on US funding, so they go abroad.
There is a fatigue amongst my peer group in Europe, that they are triple-subsidizing work: they're subsidizing Europeans to come here; they're commissioning American artists without any subsidy on this end; and when American work tours, it tours on a fee that is attempting to subsidize the rest of the company's operations. It's quite expensive to bring over American artists. In other parts of the world, there's mobility built into the DNA of the work. I wanted to try to engender that mobility here.
Related Locations
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Performance Space 122 (P.S. 122)
- 150 First Ave., at 9th St (map)
- East Village
- 212-228-4249
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