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One of the five sense, taste is the sensation in the mouth that perceives flavor. It also describes one’s likes and dislikes and describes esthetic standards. Over the next few months, The Present Tense will feature works that explore the complexities of “Taste”. Sky Fairchild-Waller starts us off. “A video back-projected onto a large screen [...]

            This Generation’s Population of Ghosts* Near Death Performance Art Experience BOSTON 2013 Sandrine Schaefer As performance art moves into a phase where it faces the same commodification, professionalization, and institutionalism that other art mediums have endured, artists and organizers are challenged with how to maintain the authenticity of the [...]

Suzy Evans “Crypt Lick” 2012 When I was in college and working in the audio visual checkout center, slide projectors were a much sought after piece of equipment for presentations in class. The technology was flawed, of course, and it was a weekly headache to fish out mangled slides that the projector had decided to [...]

“Kids in Congo were being sent down mines to die so that kids in Europe and America could kill imaginary aliens in their living rooms.” – Oona King, former member of the British Parliament. For over a decade, war has ravaged the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Fueled, in part, by an intense demand [...]

We live in a society where technology is evolving to have fewer and fewer wires.  As our technologies become more mobile, they become more integrated into the rhythms of our daily lives.  Deep in The Present Tense Archives, we found a piece that used cords from an obsolete and nostalgic technology  to confront issues around [...]

In August and September of 2012, artist and philosopher, El Putnam handed out 200 postcards with the following instructions: “write an anonymous note to someone you have loved and lost. you can write whatever you wish, but you are required to end your note with the sentence: ‘i wish you no ill will.’” The cards were returned to [...]

As we begin 2013, The Present Tense shares its reflections on 2012.  2012 offered countless moments for performance art that The Present Tense found inspirational.  Here are 12 of them: 12. We probably don’t have to explain why its awesome that “100 Years of Performance Art” came to Boston University in 2012.  This traveling exhibition [...]