Event Information

Artist and filmmaker Diane Severin Nguyen revisits the protest anthems of the Vietnam War in WAR SONGS, considering how these ballads persist not only as symbols of political conviction, but as unstable artifacts that obscure historical records and shape collective memories of conflict. Nguyen uses the Vietnam War—often referred to as the “first televised war”—as a starting point, looking towards a time when politically charged songs were just as popular as they were potent. Songs such as Donovan’s “Universal Soldier” became hits, and the countercultural visions of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Woodstock entranced an American youth decimated by the draft. Alongside composer Laszlo Horvath and a band of ten performers, she remixes and reckons with the legacy of American protest music by introducing lyrics and instrumentation from contemporary pop songs. This uncanny clash between the eras shows the trouble with protest music: these calls for freedom stick to a formula that makes them both timeless yet useless, just as one war becomes indistinguishable from all the other conflicts we see unfolding across our screens. Nguyen will stage an elaborate series of musical vignettes with the cast moving between instruments and genres, showing how protest music has always been reshaped, reused, and rebranded over time. With dynamic lighting, choreography, and live video, WAR SONGS takes on the spectacle of a televised concert and probes our culture’s sentimental gaze towards wartime, seeing freedom as a feeling to be rehearsed rather than truly experienced. --- Founded in 2004 by art historian and curator RoseLee Goldberg, Performa has expanded the possibilities for visual artists working in performance, providing essential curatorial and production support, and, with its dedicated biennial, providing a worldwide platform for performance of the 21st century. Performa Commissions have changed the possibilities of the form, and its educational programs have shown its rich history as an integral part of artistic practice, reaching back through the centuries to the Renaissance. This visionary organization has entirely transformed every art institution’s approach to visual art performance, now a staple in art museums and galleries throughout the world. Since 2005, Performa has presented ten editions of its three-week international Performa Biennial that have animated New York City every other year. In 2022, Performa and the Hartwig Art Foundation, Amsterdam, under the direction of curator Beatrix Ruf, forged a partnership to combine curatorial and archival research of world-wide performance, and to co-commission and tour select productions. The Hartwig Art Foundation partnership also includes the training of two Hartwig Art Foundation Fellows at Performa.