Event details
Friday–Sunday, October 25–27, 2024
12 pm

Dia Beacon 
3 Beekman Street
Beacon, New York

Free with museum admission. If you would like to view a livestream of the performance, RSVP here.

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 accordance with this license.

From October 25 to 27, Momentum continues with live performances by discoteca flaming star (DFS) with Michael Mahalchick. The all-encompassing multimedia performances bring together elements of sound and movement from previous Momentum engagements, while presenting live drawing taking place at Dia Beacon and streaming from DFS’s Berlin studio, simultaneously. Interspersed throughout this iteration of Momentum, subtitled Momentum: synchronize.r, are choreographic interludes developed by Alexandra Waierstall in close collaboration with dancers from around the world and performed here by Ying Yun Chen and Rachel Gill.

DFS members Cristina Gómez Barrio, Sofia Lomba, Wolfgang Mayer, and Sara Pereira are joined by Wilder Alison, Peter Cramer, Urania Fasoulidou, Michael Schultze, Karolina Szymura, and Jack Waters, as well as surprise guests. 

Momentum was initiated by Rita McBride, choreographer Alexandra Waierstall, and the experimental performance collective DFS (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. 

DFS is grateful for the support of Momentum provided by Callie’s and ifa – Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e.V. 

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