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Just/Talk: Justin Strauss with Jenny Schlenzka

Jenny Schlenzka was writing her Master’s Thesis at NYU by day and waiting tables in SoHo by night when a friend mentioned a job as a German-speaking assistant for a curator who had just started at the Museum of Modern Art. That person, Klaus Biesenbach, would later become the Chief Curator at Large at MoMA and appoint Schlenzka as the first Curator of Performance ever at the storied institution during his tenure. For this edition of Just/Talk, Schlenzka, now the current Artistic Director of Performance Space New York, chats with legendary DJ and longtime Ace friend Justin Strauss about reimagining apocalypses with queer artists of color, using performance art to engage with the world and trusting her intuition when building with new artists.

Justin Strauss: How did your journey begin, ending up here in New York and working in the arts?

Jenny Schlenzka: It wasn't planned. I came to New York in 2002 to study at NYU. I had a year-long scholarship and was supposed to go back.

Justin: Had you been here before to visit?

Jenny: I had been here once to visit a good friend of mine who was living here, so I really wanted to visit her. I was 23 or 24.

Justin: And where were you from?

Jenny: From Berlin. My university in Berlin was a partner university with NYU. I applied for this exchange and I got it. I was deeply confused about actually what I wanted to do professionally with my life. I was only supposed to stay for a year and for a while I went back and forth but ended up moving here and waiting tables, mainly in SoHo to pay my rent. I was studying for my master’s, so I was writing my master’s thesis during the day and then waited tables at night.

Justin: What part of town did you live in?

Jenny: I literally lived all around. I started out in Financial District, which was a year after 9/11, so it was very different down there. And then I moved to SoHo and then moved to the Lower East Side, East Village, Brooklyn, Tudor City, Midtown, Upper West Side.

Justin: Wow. Pretty much everywhere.

Jenny: And then Long Island City, and now back to the East Village. I came here in 2002, so that's like 16 years ago. It's been a while. And then, I was writing my thesis on actually film and television. I did a lot of media studies, so my studies were very broad like everything and nothing. And then two friends of mine approached me and said, “There's this German curator who just started at MoMA, he needs a German speaking assistant, would you be interested?” And I was literally like, “Curator? What exactly am I doing?” I was like okay, can't be worse than waiting tables and the curator turned out to be Klaus Biesenbach. I went there and started working for him.

In the beginning because Klaus was still involved with Kunst-Werke in Berlin, I was traveling to exhibitions between KW in Berlin and PS1 in Queens. But he was a curator at MoMA, so my office was with him at MoMA. In a really quick time, I got the most amazing insight into what a curator does and met all these great people and artists and pretty instantaneously fell in love with the idea of working with artists. What I also really like about this job is you keep learning because every project is completely different and it needs different knowledge and skills.

Justin: And so working with Klaus, he was a kind of a mentor but you also just learned as you went along.

Jenny: Yeah, I always say he threw me in the cold water repeatedly and I had to learn swimming quite quickly. I think it was a point where his career really took off, so he became a curator at MoMA and then was still deeply involved with PS1 and KW.

Justin: What's KW?

Jenny: Kunst-Werke. It's the equivalent of PS1 in Berlin. An independent alternative art space that was founded in an empty deserted building. He had so many projects that eventually they fell off and I picked them up and ran with them. Pretty naively, which in hindsight I think helped because I was just trying to get things done and dealing with it. And then he became the Chief Curator. They basically created a department for him first for Media and then Media and Performance. And then he was looking for a curator for performance and he basically gave that job to me. At first I felt shy and insecure about it. It was a weird mix between being naive, not even understanding what a big position that really was, in a historical place like MoMA to be the first curator to deal with performance. At the same time, I didn't know if I could do it, but just went with it really.

Justin: Did you have any background or interest in performance art?

Jenny: I was always interested in art. My parents would go to museums and I had an aunt who was a filmmaker and she would expose me to art and films. But really my background, was mostly film and video, so not performance. However, when I was at NYU I took a PhD class and a grad class at the Performance Studies program. So there was definitely some interest, but it was not something that I ever... as I said, when someone told me about this curator, Klaus, I didn't even know what a curator was really doing.

Justin: So then you just learned on the job.

Jenny: Yeah, and he was great in a way that just kept throwing things at me and I had to figure them out. Of course he was around to help me. And then I rose through the ranks. At some point, he left from MoMA to PS1 and I stayed at MoMA. I think for two years or so we didn't work together, and then he asked me to build the performance program at MoMA PS1.

Justin: And so that included the Dome?

Jenny: Exactly.

Justin: They had already been doing the Warm Up music series every summer?

Jenny: Warm Up, yeah. That existed. Even when I came here in 2002 it already existed. I built Sunday Sessions, a weekly program of live arts. And because of the sheer amount of programming, it really quickly became very interdisciplinary. So I worked obviously with performers and artists, filmmakers, musicians, chefs, writers, architects, at some point, even comedians.

Justin: Well, doing that, you learned a lot about performance. When you were curating shows, what was your connection to New York? Did you feel like that was important to bring that in or were you just looking from all over?

Jenny: Well, the easy answer is my budget was such that it had to be local. Later after a couple of years we started bringing in international people, but in the beginning it was very New York-centric. The Dome holds 400 people and we really tried to get a good crowd every Sunday. I think that's something that I really learned and now is useful here in my role as the director of Performance Space New York. We would sometimes do several events on one Sunday. For example we could have an architecture book launch and a concert in the Dome and then maybe a dance presentation in the building. And then all these different communities that can be quite siloed in New York would overlap out in Queens. But speaking of Queens, it was not easy to get people out there which is way easier here in the East Village on a weekly basis.

Justin: PS1 already had the Warm Up series going pretty strong. It was packed every Saturday. So people were figuring it out and there were less and less things happening in Manhattan that were interesting and seemed like a lot of the “cool stuff” was happening in Brooklyn and Queens at the time.

Jenny: I know, that's all true. But there's this bridge and tunnel mentality of people, even though it's literally one stop from Manhattan, it makes a difference asking people to come out to Queens.

Justin: Was it your idea to do the Dome?

Jenny: That was Klaus' idea. So he had the Dome and he hired me and said, “I want to have a weekly program changing every week and I want the house packed every week.”

Justin: Good luck.

Jenny: Yes. And you'll have a $500 budget per week.

Justin: And you managed to do it pretty much.

Jenny: Yeah, and we grew. There was also no team really. I learned in hindsight so much on that job. I had to build a team, I had to build a profile and to build this program and needed to market it, and I really learned to think about audience, which when you're at MoMA, the audience is kind of built-in. You never worried at MoMA that people won’t show up. So that was actually really good school.

Justin: And had you been very aware of the history of performance art in New York?

Jenny: Yes. Especially at MoMA. When you work at a place like MoMA, history becomes really, really important and there's nothing you do that is without thinking about lineage, history and influence. So I did a lot of research. I have to say that it was always more pre-80s. Maybe it was just not the time yet, but in the textbooks or history books, the performance art history would usually stop in the 80s. I think one of the reasons for that is that performance art went from the galleries and the lofts to the nightclubs. And so everything was taking place after midnight and there were just less art historians or critics in the clubs. I don't know. It's also changing now. After we've done the 60s and the 70s ad nauseam, people are interested in the 80s. The best thing about this gig as the first performance curator at MoMA in New York City was that the history was alive. So I reached out to everyone whose name I read in any book or heard about and introduced myself and said, “Can I come over and talk to you?” And everyone said yes. So really that history I mostly learned firsthand, which is great.

Justin: There was a strong connection of nightclubs and artists back in the early 80s when I started deejaying that was really inspiring obviously.

Jenny: And that we now really looked at more in-depth with our inaugural season, which we call the East Village Series.

Justin: So you're at MoMA and then PS1 — how many years did you do the performance curating?

Jenny: I think I was at MoMA five years and then at PS1 five years. Something like that.

Justin: Tell me about this building that we are in now and its transformation into Performance Space.

Jenny: So PS122, how we were named until very recently was originally a public school, hence the PS. It was in 1979, 1980 that a bunch of artists who were living in the neighborhood in the East Village came and started doing work in here.

Justin: And it was still a functioning public school?

Jenny: No, not as a school. I think that ended during the white flight probably in the 60s or so. So when everyone moved to the suburbs, they closed the school because they didn't have enough students. So it was an empty building similar to PS1 in Queens. Very similar story. And then artists came in here, started making work. We still have painting studios in the building as part of Painting Space 122, a lot of great painters camp out of here. Keith Haring had a studio here. Peter Halley had his first show. Martha Rosler was here, a lot of really great artists went through the program.

Justin: And was someone organizing this?

Jenny: It was self-organized during the first years.

Justin: So were the artists paying rent, or were they able to work here for free?

Jenny: The city allowed them to be here. They didn't necessarily pay rent, but they had to pay the operating costs. It was legal, it wasn't even necessarily illegal. Maybe there was a short period.

Justin: It seems to me like Europe and other places are way more supportive of artists and art. When here in New York and the rest of the country where there is this great talent pool of people now and certainly was back then, it’s impossible to get funding from the government for art.

Jenny: Well, there's almost no public support. However, the fact that we have this building, it's now been renovated by the city and we don't pay rent, we pay a lot of operating costs but that's already huge for American standards. Yeah, I agree, in Europe we would have this building for free plus a big check every month. So, it’s a different system.

The cafeteria had a wooden floor so it was really attractive to dancers and performers and they started coming here and also doing work and then doing performances for their other artist peers. And slowly throughout the years it became really an institution with grants and with a smaller staff and became really famous and was a very important venue for contemporary performance.

Justin: What years was that taking place?

Jenny: Beginning of 80s. It was more a local phenomena and then I would say end of 80s, beginning of the 90s it really had a worldwide reputation as the place where you come to see contemporary American performance art. There was a lot of very political monologues. Artists like Karen Finley or Spalding Gray or Penny Arcade. Their histories are very intertwined with this place.

Justin: And there was a very healthy scene going on in this neighborhood back then with Club 57, which recently had a retrospective exhibit at MoMA, and the Pyramid Club and others.

Jenny: Exactly, yes. And as I said earlier, a lot of performances took place in clubs back then.

Justin: Right. Like the Mudd Club had an upstairs space, there was a lot of performances and performance art taking place.

Jenny: Which is why we had a show called “Club” by Tiona Nekkia McClodden here for the inaugural season to really look at that history and also how it changed because of the economic or the real estate situation in New York City, clubs do not really exist to such an extent anymore.

Justin: Artists like a Keith Haring or whoever would come here from Nowheresville and get a place for $200 a month on Broome Street or wherever and would be able to work on their art.

Jenny: Yeah, and that doesn't exist anymore.

Justin: So what do young artists do now?

Jenny: Well, in terms of nightlife, they still have parties, but it's not so much run by clubs. It's not bound to particular spaces anymore. It's bound to hosts and parties and they move around mostly outside of Manhattan. But I think there's still quite a scene.

Justin: Like back then it seemed like the galleries were like actively seeking to work with young artists.

Jenny: I think that still exists. It's just different. It's more decentralized. It happens for example more in the virtual space.

Justin: There was definitely like a scene. There were this group of artists that were just hanging together, working together.

Jenny: Honestly, I think that exists still too. It's just more scattered and they don't all live in the same neighborhood anymore. They're spread out. Some are in Queens, some are in Brooklyn, some are up in Harlem or the Bronx. So it's different, but I still think that nightlife is still really a center of creativity in New York City. It's just harder to come by. You have to work for it.

Justin: And how did you end up here? You're at your job at PS1, and what happens?

Jenny: Well, they asked me to interview and I just had my first child. I had a good job at PS1 but it had been five years and I felt like there was not that much more growth in that job. If a prestigious institution like this asks you to come and interview, you do it.

Justin: And had you been aware of this place?

Jenny: Yes. I lived in the neighborhood and walked by this building many times. I've been here only two or three times because the building closed in 2011 for renovation. By the time I became a performance curator, which was around 2008, it was only open another three years. So I was aware of it. I was vaguely aware of the history, not to the extent I am now.

Justin: And who reached out to you?

Jenny: The board was searching for a new executive artistic director. I interviewed and then part of the interview process — while the building was still under construction, they brought me in here to see the spaces and that's actually really when I fell in love. We have this big 3,600 square foot theater with high ceilings with this gorgeous view over Downtown. And then a smaller space, I think it's 2,400, sits up to a hundred people. The big one sits up to 200 and much more standing room. When I saw these big two spaces, it's something that I had always dreamed of at PS1, to work more with juxtaposition in performance, and these two spaces right next to each other.

Jenny: So right now we have an exhibition in there by the American artists Sondra Perry, Caitlin Cherry and Nora Khan. They built this wild structure in there like a “tiny house.” This is all part of the current season, the Posthuman Series, which incorporates perspectives that are beyond the human, the merging of the human and machines, animals and nature, for example. The apocalypse and the end of the world is a big theme too. So they built a tiny house to live off the grid, to be mobile once the apocalypse hits. It’s also a reference to the so called Prepper Movement. I didn't know so much about it, and they did a lot of research. Basically, the premise is, they built a tiny house for queer people of color because usually it's a pretty white heteronormative movement, and what they're saying is that people of color in this country basically have been living the apocalypse, surviving the apocalypse for centuries. So who better to talk about survival and the apocalypse than them.

Every season we have one or two exhibitions in the program and which happen in the bigger space. We just had Ron Athey in there and before that Underground Resistance from Detroit who are about the merging of men and machines. I love having all these very different perspectives in dialogue with each other.

Justin: What's your vision for this place?

Jenny: I think the main goal is to become a truly artist-centric organization, which I think is in our DNA because this organization was founded by artists for artists. I earlier said that in the beginning it was artists making work and the audience was other artists. So really to have a space that listens to what artists actually right now need and what they want to do and how we can support that. Part of that is creating new and supporting existing communities, which also this space has always had... there's always been communities supporting it, running it, and we have the great fortune to looking back over four decades of artist generations coming through here who all feel connected to the organization.

Justin: A lot of them are still connected to this place.

Jenny: Yeah, very much so, which is really great. That's a real gift. Everyone talks about the gentrification of this neighborhood, which absolutely is true and exists but there is still a sense of a true neighborhood with functioning communities. If you walk four blocks further east, there's definitely still a lot of working class — it’s not all rich and bougie.

Justin: Yes. There is still something here, hanging by a thread, but there's still something here whether it's just walking by and seeing Gem Spa or Moishe’s Bakery or just a few things that are still able to survive in this climate is remarkable to me.

Jenny: And being a space for really local people and at the same time make an impact internationally. Talk about what is performance art? Why are people so interested in it? It seems like people are extremely interested in it more than maybe 15 years ago. And how can performance art help us to engage with the world in a meaningful way, so to say. Hence, we have those themes where there are connections between all the individual programs. They might be very different in form and their history might be a different one, but somehow we always try to make connections between them.

Justin: I love how you always seemed to have some kind of musical elements connected to the art, which we were talking about before. It seems to have faded away for a long time. How would a young artist get his work in here? How do you decide?

Jenny: There's not one straight way. We are having several programs where we invite guest curators with the idea to bring in artists that might actually not be on our radar. It's a program that we're announcing actually today called Octopus. You know how the animal has eight arms, and each of the arms has an individual brain. So they actually act and sense independently. But there's the brain and the heart and they all belong together and work together as one body. So, word of mouth, I go out and see a lot. My team goes out and sees a lot. But I try to see as much as possible. If people invite me to see a show, I try to go as much as I can. Honestly, it's really by either seeing something or someone telling me, “You should really check out this work. It's amazing.”

Justin: Instagram?

Jenny: I have to admit Instagram's become actually really important.

Justin: Social media and the arts.

Jenny: I do get a lot of ideas from there, also probably because I'm a mother now and don't go out as much as I used to. I do really follow artists on Instagram more than I would like to admit, but maybe that's just the times we're in. I get asked this question about decision making a lot and I think it's a mix about being informed and intuition. I've given artists commissions who I’ve never seen any of their work but just had a great conversation with them and I felt like I really want to see what this person would do... and most of the time, knock on wood, I've been right. There was always something there.

Justin: And in the current political climate in this country and a lot of places in the world, this place would seem to be a vessel for artists who are rebelling or who have a voice that is opposed to what's been going on. And I guess you are very open to that.

Jenny: Absolutely. And again, it goes back to our history. During the culture wars in the 90s, most of the artists who were under attack by Jessie Helms, who was the Republican senator attacking artists’ freedoms, the so-called “NEA Four” had all showed here the year before the big trials. So this place was always very political, very loud. We have been very involved in gay rights and AIDS activism. I think if anything, looking at our history, and what we could do better, is being more inclusive in terms of race and ability which we're really paying a lot of attention to now. And it also quite frankly I think is where most of the interesting work comes from right now. It's from traditionally unheard voices I'm most interested to hear from right now.

Justin: The world is in such a weird state. What's your feeling about the state of the world right now and what can art do to make that better?

Jenny: I don't know. I think like everyone I have my moments where I get really scared because you think it can’t get any worse. You check the news and then it does get worse. I do feel and know and live it every day that artists have traditionally been and still are the guiding lights to lead societies through difficult times. Activism is something different than art even though there's a lot of people that we work with where that overlaps, but I do feel art has a different role and ultimately it's about telling stories and finding, creating — like this exhibition — “The Wild Ass Beyond: Apocalypse Right Now,” we have on right now is really about creating possibilities for new and different worlds in a world that seems to be over. And I think artists are the people who have always been doing this and will always continue doing it.

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