Event details
Friday, May 10, and Sunday, May 12, 2024
12 pm

Dia Beacon 
3 Beekman Street
Beacon, New York

Free with museum admission.

For the duration of Rita McBride: Arena Momentum at Dia Beacon, an expanding body of artists, performers, writers, musicians, and dancers activates physical and virtual spaces as part of a series of engagements with McBride’s Arena (1997). The activations are guided by the conceptual parameters of Arena’s copyleft license (ɔ). The digital files of Arena are freely available to the public in perpetuity in accordance with this license.

Momentum continues this May, following activations in October 2023 and February 2024, with choreographic interludes developed over time by Alexandra Waierstall in close collaboration with dancers from around the world and interactions from the Berlin studio of discoteca flaming star with Michael Mahalchick.

Momentum was initiated by Rita McBride, choreographer Alexandra Waierstall, and the experimental performance collective discoteca flaming star (founded by Cristina Gómez Barrio and Wolfgang Mayer).

Please note that the Momentum performances will involve nudity. Photography in the Rita McBride: Arena Momentum galleries will not be permitted during the performances.

Rita McBride was born in Des Moines and lives in Düsseldorf and California. Since the mid-1980s, she has developed a conceptual, cross-disciplinary, intermedia, and feminist approach to art-making that holds collaboration at its center. 

Her artwork, Arena, was realized in 1997.

Alexandra Waierstall was born in England, raised in Cyprus, and lives in Düsseldorf. Her conceptual choreographic practice attends to the relationships between time, memory, presence, and embodiment. Since 2016, she has choreographed cyclical encounters with Arena. 

discoteca flaming star (DFS) is a shared interdisciplinary practice based in Berlin. Through conceptual, visual, and musical transfers, DFS creates experimental performances to challenge conventional notions pertinent to public memory. Since 1999, DFS has engaged, informed, and performed with Arena.

Momentum collaborators:

Amani Alquatrani
Olivia Ancona
Volker Bertelmann
Stavros Gasparatos
Randy Gibson
Rachel Gill
Kimberly Golding
Matilde Guidelli-Guidi
Judith Jaeger
Scott Jennings
Amy Josh
Georgios Kotsifakis
Sofia Lomba
Alexis Lowry
Michael Mahalchick
Emily Markert
Mollie McKinley
Ioanna Paraskevopoulou
Sara Pereira
Evangelia Randou
David Reinfurt
Rosa Sarholz
Christina Sickingen
Courtney Smith
Don Stahl
Eftychia Stefanou
Karolina Szymura
Sara Tucker
Lucia Vornhein
Dan Wolfe
Ying Yun Chen