ABSTRACT
Using the exhibition I curated in 2021, Queer Communion: Ron Athey, as an example, this text explores the question of how (or whether) to curate shows relating to live art practices in the gallery/museum setting. Can one curate performance art without reifying and ‘ruining’ the energies of performance and the live? Is curatorial practice a place to experiment with alternative ways of historicizing live art? I argue, through my exhibition, that it potentially is. Rather than attempting to ‘conserve’ performance by ‘curating’ an artist’s individual performances, I specifically set out to explore how to honor the complexities of a lived career of performance through the formation of queer communities in and around the artist Ron Athey.
