If I Can’t Dance is pleased to welcome you to its offices at Westerdok 606-608, Amsterdam for Rhea Anastas’ introduction to her study of the artist and philosopher Adrian Piper’s Some Reflective Surfaces (1975–1976). In the piece, Piper appears as a disco dancer in modified Mythic Being guise with narration and film, performing for the first time in formal terms for an art audience.

For this introduction, Anastas will screen two works by Adrian Piper, Aspects of the Liberal Dilemma (1978) and It’s Just Art (1980).

Admission to the presentation is free and no reservation is required.

This presentation is part of an unfolding programme of introductions to the artists and researchers of VII (2017–2018), Social Movement, which see the commissioned artists present an existing work and the Performance in Residence researchers an introduction to their project. These events take place each month—across September, October, November and December—in various locations in Amsterdam.

With thanks to The University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; APRA Foundation Berlin; and Lévy Gorvy, New York.

Rhea Anastas (b. 1969) is cofounder of Orchard, and Associate Professor in the Department of Art at University of California, Irvine. Orchard was an artist-run gallery in New York's Lower East Side (2005–2008), a then-transitional neighborhood in Lower Manhattan, started amidst the grim afterhours of George W. Bush’s reelection by Anastas, Moyra Davey, Andrea Fraser, R. H. Quaytman, Jeff Preiss—twelve cofounders, nine of whom are artists, in all. Anastas is author, with Michael Brenson, of Witness to Her Art: Art and Writings by Adrian Piper, Mona Hatoum, Cady Noland, Jenny Holzer, Kara Walker, Daniela Rossell and Eau de Cologne (Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, distributed by D.A.P. Distributed Art Publishers, 2006). She is author of Double Bind, a book-length long form dialogue co-written with artist Leigh Ledare (A.R.T. Press, Art Resources Transfer, New York, 2015). Anastas’ latest essay, “Property and Community in the Recent Work,” considers the work of Louise Lawler as it engages with, and is seen through, the work of three other artists, Andrea Fraser, Cameron Rowland, and Michael Asher. Published in Louise Lawler: Receptions, edited by Roxana Marcoci (The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2017) in conjunction with the exhibition Louise Lawler: WHY PICTURES NOW, The Museum of Modern Art, April 30 – July 30, 2017.

Adrian Piper (b. 1948) is a first-generation Conceptual artist who started exhibiting her work internationally at the age of twenty and graduated from the School of Visual Arts in 1969. While continuing to produce and exhibit her artwork internationally, she received a B.A. in Philosophy from CCNY in 1974 and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Harvard in 1981 under the supervision of John Rawls. She studied Kant and Hegel with Dieter Henrich at the University of Heidelberg in 1977–1978, and taught philosophy fulltime for 30 years with specializations in metaethics and Kant. She was the first tenured African American woman Professor in the field of philosophy. Her two-volume study in Kantian metaethics, Rationality and the Structure of the Self, integrates desire into reason and standard decision theory into classical predicate logic. Piper introduced issues of race and gender into the vocabulary of Conceptual art and explicit political content into Minimalism. In 2000 she further expanded the vocabulary of Conceptual art to include Vedic philosophical imagery and concepts. She is the recipient of many fellowships and awards in art and philosophy, and her artwork is in many important collections. Her seventh traveling retrospective will open at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in the spring of 2018. Her artwork won the Golden Lion for Best Artist at the 56th Venice Biennale. Adrian Piper has studied and practiced yoga since 1965, and lives and works in Berlin, where she runs the APRA Foundation Berlin.

The programme of If I Can’t Dance is financially supported by the Mondriaan Fund, the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union, the AFK (Amsterdam Fund for the Arts), and Ammodo. If I Can’t Dance is a member of Corpus and Performance Platform.