An international programme of talks, shows, salons and films with irreverent artists and thinkers working at the edges of taste and respectability.

Performance Matters presents Trashing Performance 25 - 30 October 2011 at Toynbee Studios, Tate Modern and Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club With Oreet Ashery, Neil Bartlett, Bruce Benderson, Lauren Berlant, Franco Bifo Berardi, Mel Brimfield, Tania Bruguera, Vaginal Davis, David Hoyle, José Esteban Muñoz, Lois Weaver and many others. 

Trashing Performance explores the power of creative expressions that wilfully debunk or ignore cultural ideals and hierarchies of critical value. It presents and investigates art and culture often considered too left-field by the proprieties of high minded and elite taste. This programme of talks, shows and films provides a space to think again about the value of irreverent and sometimes overlooked performance practices in public exchanges between different performance audiences and artists, academics, activists, and curators. Trashing Performance asks what is at stake in calling something or someone ‘trash’, and explores the cultural histories which inform the value of ‘trashy-ness’ in contemporary practice. It explores how some performance artists risk high seriousness by embracing ‘cheap’ aesthetics and popular forms, and considers how underground and avant-garde performers have sometimes made a virtue out of producing work beyond the critical pale.

Click here for full timetable of talks