MaMA 

Come to MAMA this summer to catch one of Ryan McNamara’s 754,974,720 personal performances. From 15 June, MAMA presents Survey, a solo project by performance artist Ryan McNamara (U.S. 1979). From 15 June to 19 June, Ryan McNamara will be present in MAMA to give tailored performances to our visitors. Ryan and his assistants will create performances based on the results of visitor questionnaires. From Friday 22 June to 4 August, our visitors, using the same questionnaire, can create performances for each other. Everyone is part of this great DIY spectacle. Survey can also be followed via livestream on www.showroommama.nl

From 15 June to 19 June, Ryan McNamara shall be present to give personal performances to our visitors. On the basis of a selection menu, 754,974,720 different performances can be composed. The performances in MAMA’s showroom can be followed via livestream. Collector Michael Kantrow has made an online tool for MAMA and Ryan McNamara that allows the performances in the showroom to be followed via livestream.

From 22 June to 4 August an installation of videos will be on show of the performances that Ryan and his assistants have made for MAMA’s visitors. The installation is simultaneously a performance arena where visitors can organize their own performances using McNamara’s instructions.

Ryan McNamara is an artist who makes use of others form part of his work. His work exists by virtue of the public and in the active participation of others, professional or amateur. During the performance project Make Ryan a Dancer (2010) at PS1 in New York, he received 104 days of lessons from different dance instructors. During the presentation of Make Ryan a Dancer, Ryan, followed by the visitors, performed breakdance, classical ballet, etc. throughout the whole of the PS1 exhibition space. In his first major solo exhibition Still (2012), visitors walked into a photo studio. Everyone became a model and posed in madcap scenes with absurd costumes and postures.

Survey is in keeping with MAMA’s programme themes ‘All Together Now’ and ‘Internet Aware’. ‘All Together Now’ focuses on participant activated installations and performances where the public play a role but the artist is the catalyst for events and evenings that would otherwise not exist. ‘Internet Aware’ focuses on online and offline art and culture, where objects and images cannot be understood without knowledge of the systems, symbols, and possibilities created and offered by the Internet.