The Essential Jill Johnston Symposium

Jill Johnston: A Performance Experiment
1PM

In the late 1960s, Jill Johnston became known for creating forums she termed “panel performances,” events where artists and writers gathered to discuss a topic. But while such gatherings usually involve those designated as experts telling a supposedly less-knowledgeable audience what to think about a central topic, Johnston hated hierarchies and the elevation of experts. Johnston invented the panel performance format to help identify strategies for upending hierarchies of knowledge–often to spectacular ends. One 1968 panel performance ended with no panelists left onstage and a pig loose in NYU’s Loeb Student Center–a building that is now the home of NYU Skirball.

Inspired by Johnston’s panel performances, this performance experiment focuses on Johnston’s body of writing and life with direction by Tina Satter and a panel composed of artists and thinkers: Jess Barbagallo, Pauline L. Boulba, Clare Croft, Aminata Labor, Nola Sporn Smith, & Anh Vo.

Jill Johnston in Context
1:45PM

This conversation, moderated by writer and critic Jennifer Krasinski, places Jill Johnston in context, bringing together Johnston’s contemporaries in dance and art and situating her work in longer trajectories of feminist and queer thinking and journalism and arts histories. Speakers: J Dellecave, Hillary Miller, Mara Mills, & Kay Turner.

Thinking with Jill Johnston
3:30PM

This panel brings together artists and thinkers who have been inspired to create new work based on Jill Johnston, including Clare Croft, Pauline Boulba and Aminata Labor. Each panelists will share excerpts from their work, and then be in conversation with one another, moderator writer and critic Jennifer Krasinski, and the audience.