ADRIAN PIPER: Funk Lessons

Funk Lessons is a videotape piece based on an audience-interactive performance of the same name at the University of California, Berkeley. Both performance and tape address the ambiguous status of African-American working class music and dance as serious contributors to American art and culture. In the performance Piper teaches the audience how to listen to funk music and how to dance to it. The performance evolves into a more discussive situation with audience response and interaction.

The video is edited and directed by Sam Samore and produced by Tom Oden.

Adrian Piper (b. 1948) is a conceptual artist and philosopher with an artistic career spanning over six decades and working with a wide range of mediums and themes. Piper’s work has been highly influential in the field of performative art practices taking an active role in questioning societal hegemonies. Piper treats the reoccurring themes of race, gender and class with a straight forward and problematizing approach. In 2015 Piper was awarded the Golden Lion in the 56th Venice Biennale. In 2018 The Museum of Modern Art in New York organized an extensive career retrospective “Adrian Piper: A Synthesis of Intuitions, 1965–2016”.

Image Credit: Adrian Piper, Funk Lessons, 1983-84. Group performance, University of California at Berkeley, 1983. Video documentation by Sam Samore. 00:14:58. Detail: video still at 00:14:03. Collection of the Adrian Piper Research Archive (APRA) Foundation Berlin © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation.