Miles Greenberg’s "WAR" Channels China’s Terracotta Army In a Six-Hour Performance

Performa, the nonprofit arts organization dedicated to 20th- and 21st-century performance art, presented the New York premiere of Miles Greenberg’s WAR in partnership with CAP99, Elephant, and Library Fetish. Taking place at the former 86th Street Cinema and curated by Zoe Lukov, the six-hour piece was the artist’s first in New York in more than three years, drawing art-world guests including Marina Abramović, Jeanne Greenberg, Yvonne Force Villareal, Thomas Rom, Gisela McDaniel, Adrian Danchig-Waring, and Performa founding director and chief curator RoseLee Goldberg.

Drawing on the terracotta army of China’s Qin dynasty, the piece featured more than 40 performers—the most Greenberg has incorporated into one piece—moving in automatic motion to newly commissioned songs by experimental electronic musician Chino Amobi. “This work offers the shape of war,” Greenberg says. Performers were scanned live with 3D technology the artist adapted to capture bodies in motion, producing glitch-like marble sculptures. “I learned to make performances through sculpture and now I’m making sculpture through performance,” he adds.