Everywhere and all at once: Performa 07, the second installment of the new biennial, brought a staggering range of live events to venues large and small throughout New York City

Art in America, March, 2008

Even the sudden high-tech climax when Blanchett finally materialized--the "performance art" component of the evening, presumably--was something of a bust. She descended the Guggenheim's ramp, heavily veiled, swathed in high-fashion mourning (by John Galllano), to the accompaniment of strobe lights and earsplitting howls from a wind machine-but given the length of that ramp, her promenade took several minutes, by which time her arrival on stage failed to excite.

Vezzoll is young (36), well-connected and well-funded (Right You Are ... was co-produced by Performa, Gagosian Gallery and the Guggenheim), and clearly very persuasive, judging by the theater and film notables he brings together for his projects. He is best known for his hilariously raunchy 5-minute video Trailer for a Remake of Gore Vidal's Caligula (with Helen Mirren, Courtney Love, Karen Black and Benicio Del Toro, plus Vidal himself); a crowd-pleaser at the 2005 Venice Biennale and at the Whitney Biennial of 2006, Caligula was better on first viewing than on second. It was followed in a similar vein by Marlene Redux: A True Hollywood Story! (2006), commissioned by Francois Pinault, featuring (among other things) Vezzoli's own fictional demise, Sunset Boulevard style, in a swimming pool. Also brief is Democrazy (2007), a parody (if such a thing is possible) of a U.S. presidential campaign commercial starring Sharon Stone and Bernard-Henri Levy. With Right You Are ..., Vezzoli takes on a play that offers none of the easy laughs of his earlier sources, and, given its cachet (Pirandello won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1935, after all) and length, he enters more challenging territory.

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The evening began with a pre-performance delay during which hundreds of ticket holders fumed on the Guggenheim's sidewalk for a period that exceeded the duration of the play itself. Many left in a snit, but for those who stuck it out, the event had its rewards. Whatever the misfires of the piece, it was good to see Vezzoli treading a less familiar path, and the evening left a vivid visual impression of a strangely fractured and ambiguous production that the play's author just might have enjoyed. In hindsight, one could savor a reprise of the exasperation generated in 1917.

Later, one could also muse on the fact that, unbeknownst to the audience seated in the rotunda or jammed together on the ramps, the piece had, simultaneously, a variant incarnation in the Guggenheim's basement auditorium on a big video screen, witnessed only by the small audience that intimate hall can seat. There, as evidenced by most of the press photos issued by Performa, close-ups of the actors' faces appeared on screen, while Blanchett awaited her cue seated onstage. The presentation in the rotunda was billed as a live, one-night event, sufficient unto itself--not as raw material for a video work. Even so, can one help wondering if we will be treated to video excerpts--say, at the next Venice Biennale? If that were to happen, one might get a look at the actors' faces and actually hear their voices. (A video production credit does appear in the program.)