With just one day to go, New York’s Performa biennial said it had made the last-minute decision to postpone a new work by Lina Lapelytė because the piece’s venue remained shuttered by the government shutdown.
The work, titled The Speech (NYC), involves 100 children making what a description labels “primal sounds—coos, cries, barks, howls, and roars.” It’s a new version of a preexisting work that has previously been shown at venues such as Paris’s Bourse de Commerce.
Lapelytė, whose opera for the Lithuanian Pavilion at the 2019 Venice Biennale won her the Golden Lion alongside Vaiva Grainytė and Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė, had planned to debut the work on Wednesday at the Federal Hall National Memorial, the first capitol building of the US. But because the site is operated by the National Parks Service, it remains closed, along with most other organizations that receive government funding, including the Smithsonian museums and the National Gallery of Art.
“Our original venue, Federal Hall, a historic site of American democracy where oaths were once sworn and voices first rose to shape a nation, remains closed at this time, under the management of the National Park Service,” Performa said in a statement. “We are working with colleagues around the city to confirm a new venue, and will share updates as soon as we have them.”
Performa has rescheduled Wednesday’s performance of The Speech (NYC) for November 17.
Lapelytė’s piece is one of eight being staged as part of this year’s biennial. Others include new works by Ayoung Kim, Camille Henrot, and Pakui Hardware, a duo who also happens to have represented Lithuania at the Venice Biennale previously.
