Join us for an afternoon with Bruce Barber in conversation with academic, writer, curator and artist Clive Robertson on the occasion of the launch of his latest books Performance, [Performance] and Performers (2 volume set, edited by Marc James Leger, YYZBooks).

Bruce Barber is the quintessential dissident theorist/artist. Navigating the history of contemporary performance and performative conceptual art with ease, he maintains the position of the artist, the maker. His unique approach is dense and rewarding, a virtual intervention into the standard social performance narratives. Barber's subtle iconoclasm -- aimed at the generalizations (we) critics have promulgated-- expands the context in which performance is considered and creates in the process a new kind of criticism that tackles the contradictions embedded in postmodernism and political art activism. Barber zeroes in on the function of the work, monitoring a kind of chain reaction as it acts on culture,� rather than as an enactment in culture. These two volumes contain the most intelligent treatment of performance phenomena to date.

~Lucy R. Lippard, author of Get the Message? A Decade of Art for Social Change