FEELING$ FEELING$ FEELING$

Floor 3, Theater

Saturday, July 20, 2024
Sunday, July 21, 2024

Exact timing of performances to be announced at a later date.

Playing with perceptions of language and narrative structure, Alex Tatarsky’s live performances are highly responsive to venue and audience, careening between scripted sequences and unfettered improvisation. As part of the performance program organized by guest curator Taja Cheek for Whitney Biennial 2024: Even Better Than the Real Thing, they will chew up remnants of past works and spit them out alongside new investigations prompted by thematics they identify throughout the exhibition: unpredictable weather patterns, intestinal discomfort, the American flag as a poem and a warning. Acting as a vessel for materials to speak through, they treat the associative language that emerges as sculptural material to be bent and disassembled.  

A trained clown, Tatarsky embraces the figure of the bouffon, a European clown type said to live in the swamps at the edge of the kingdom, who was not only allowed to mock the king’s power but rewarded for it. Over the course of the Biennial, the artist will conduct covert research throughout the Museum. Methodologies include eavesdropping, spirit channelling of inanimate objects, and taking Lower Manhattan’s buried wetlands as a prompt: letting that which lies beneath the surface seep, leak, and flood. 

FEELING$ FEELING$ FEELING$ was commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Alex Tatarsky (they/them; born 1989 in New York, NY; lives and works in New York, NY, and Philadelphia, PA) makes live performances in the unfortunate in-between zone of dance, theater, performance art, music, and comedy—drawing on traditions from vaudeville to futurist poetry, postmodern dance to clown. Tatarsky performs original solo works at a wide array of venues including La MaMa, MoMA PS1, The Kitchen, Judson Memorial Church, and Abrons Arts Center, as well comedy clubs, bars, basements, and DIY spaces. As curatorial fellow at the Poetry Project, they organized a series on the poetics and politics of rot. Along with collaborator Ming Lin, they form one half of Shanzhai Lyric and its fictional office Canal Street Research Association. Tatarsky experienced fleeting fame as Andy Kaufman’s daughter and used to perform as a mound of dirt. 

Tatarsky will continue working with frequent collaborators Shane Riley (sound) and Andreea Mincic (costumes, scenic) as well as a roving group of beloved interlocutors including: Nile Harris, Lisa Fagan, Ming Lin, Hanna Novak, Magda San Millan, Iris McCloughan, and Anh Vo.