EFA Gallery is pleased to offer, during the Performa07 performance biennial, Performance on Demand: EAI Viewing Room at EFA Gallery. EFA Gallery will be transformed into a video lounge to host Electronic Arts Intermix’s Viewing Room, a program that provides free public access to one of the foremost collections of video art in the world. Visitors to EFA Gallery will be able to choose from a curated selection of major performance-based video works by over 30 artists from the EAI Collection. Viewers may watch these seminal performances and contemporary classics at their own pace in a comfortable viewing environment. During the opening reception on Friday, November 2nd, programs featuring selected works will be installed throughout the gallery.

Since the advent of affordable and portable video cameras, video has been a vital tool for artists working in performance. The history of performance art and the history of video have become inseparable. Through video, artists can capture the fleeting and ephemeral, preserving unrepeatable actions as electronic moving images, and audiences that could not be present in the flesh are able to access the rich and dynamic history of performance. The works available for viewing at EFA Gallery will include rarely-seen video documentation of ground-breaking performances by artists including Chris Burden, Dan Graham, and Carolee Schneemann; extraordinary videos in which performance was carefully crafted for the camera by artists such as Vito Acconci, Eleanor Antin, Joan Jonas, Martha Rosler and William Wegman; conceptual masterpieces by John Baldessari, Bruce Nauman, and Lawrence Weiner; as well as important works by many other key artists who have explored the profound consequences of combining performance and video.