THE REALITY SHOWS
a conversation with Karen Finley
April 6, Wednesday
6:30 to 8 pm
READ THE REVIEW! Reclaiming Hysteria in The Reality Shows: A Conversation with Karen Finley and Ann Pellegrini
Karen Finley, Art and Public Policy, NYU
Ann Pellegrini, Performance Studies & Religious Studies, NYU
The Reality Shows collects a decade’s worth of performance pieces by internationally renowned artist and cultural provocateur Karen Finley. One of the hallmarks of Finley’s work—and nowhere more urgently showcased than in this new collection—is the way she uses multiple aesthetic forms in order to disturb settled emotional and political responses to both individual and collective trauma. To mark the publication of The Reality Shows, Finley sits down for a wide-ranging conversation with performance studies scholar Ann Pellegrini to discuss ongoing currents in Finley’s artistic practice and the work of performance art in an age of virtual reality.
Department of Performance Studies
721 Broadway, Room 612
between Waverly and Washington Places
Karen Finley’s raw and transgressive performances have long provoked controversy and debate. She has appeared and exhibited her visual art, performances, and plays internationally. The author of many books, including A Different Kind of Intimacy, George & Martha, and Shock Treatment, she is a professor in the Department of Art and Public Policy at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.
Ann Pellegrini is Associate Professor of Performance Studies and Religious Studies at New York University, where she also directs NYU’s Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality. She is the author of Performance Anxieties: Staging Psychoanalysis, Staging Race; co-author, with Janet R. Jakobsen, of Love the Sin: Sexual Regulation and the Limits of Religious Tolerance; co-editor, with Daniel Boyarin and Daniel Itzkovitz, of Queer Theory and the Jewish Question; and co-editor, with Jakobsen, of Secularisms.
Co-sponsored by NYU’s Department of Art and Public Policy, Department of Performance Studies and Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics; and by The Feminist Press.
This event is free and open to the public. Venue is wheelchair accessible. If you need accommodations, please let us know as soon as possible.
Seating is limited and on a first-come basis. No RSVPs.
For more information, please call 212-992-9540 or email csgs(at)nyu.edu.