No applause On performance, audiences, and institutions

October 27 2025, 2.00pm

Free admission upon registration

Traditionally, performance has been hosted, framed, and legitimised by institutions – theaters, galleries, academies, museums. But institutions themselves perform: they enact roles, follow scripts, reproduce norms, and produce effects. They are performative. The focus of the seminar – multi-voiced dialogue featuring Jonas Tinius, Justin Randolph Thompson, and Anna Chiara Cimoli – moves from artists performing within institutions to critically reflecting institutions as performers themselves.

Departing from concrete practices, a series of questions will be addressed: In what ways does the production of performance transform institutions? What forms of knowledge or practice, if any, do they genuinely absorb or extract from performance, and how might these inform their day-to-day operations? What is it actually that we mean when we talk about performance? What is the difference between performance and performativity?

Speakers Jonas Tinius Justin Randolph Thompson Anna Chiara Cimoli

Anna Chiara Cimoli is a lecturer in Contemporary Art History at the University of Bergamo. Her work focuses on interpretation, particularly in relation to the dynamics of coloniality and contested heritage, with a specific focus on museum representation. Since 2020, she has been the curator of MUBIG. She collaborates with ABCittà and GAMeC. She is also a member of the scientific committee working with the Fondazione Scuola del Patrimonio to develop initiatives aimed at enhancing accessibility in Italian museums, libraries, and archives. She is President of the CASVA Foundation and co-director of the online journal Roots§Routes. Research on Visual Culture. She is scientific director of the editorial Museologia presente book series for Nomos Edizioni.

Justin Randolph Thompson is an artist, cultural facilitator and educator born in Peekskill, NY in 1979. Based between Italy and the US since 1999, Thompson is Co-Founder and Director of Black History Month Florence, a multi-faceted exploration of Black histories and cultures in the context of Italy founded in 2016 and reframed as a Black cultural center called The Recovery Plan. Thompson is a recipient of the 2022 Creative Capital Award and the 2020 Italian Council Research Fellowship, amongst others. His work and performances have been exhibited in institutions including The Whitney Museum of American Art and Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, and are part of numerous collections including The Studio Museum in Harlem and the Museo MADRE. His life and work seek to deepen the discussions around socio-cultural stratification and the arrogance of permanence, fostering projects that connect academic discourse, social activism and DIY networking strategies.

Jonas Tinius studied social anthropology at the University of Cambridge, where he also completed a PhD. He held visiting research and teaching posts at the Universität zu Köln, the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), the The Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti (NABA) in Milan, the Centre Marc Bloch in Berlin, and the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max Planck Institute. He was co-founder and co-coordinator of several research networks. Since 2025, he is secretary of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) and co-convenor of the EASA network colleex - collaboratory for ethnographic experimentation, together with Adolfo Estalella, Elisabeth Luggauer, and Maka Suarez.

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Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.

Credits

Within the project Perform Inform Transform: Participatory Performance in Art Museums (PIT)

Co-funded by the European Union