Performance and Film Ever Present

Always free and open-ended, Ever Present showcases the intersections of poetry, performance, dance, music, and more

  • Throughout the year
  • Getty Center
Two dancers wearing a soft, rock-shaped costume perform in front of a large, travertine wall outdoors. One is laying flat on the ground, the other is crouched on a square platform.
Performance of Deborah Hay's Sensing the Future: LIVE at the Getty Center, 2024

About

Ever Present invites artistic experimenters to stage ephemeral performances amid Getty’s permanent collections, architecture, and gardens.

Walk through the garden created by artist Robert Irwin at the Getty Center and you’ll come across two stones in the path engraved with this message:

Ever present / Never twice the same / Ever changing / Never less than whole.

This series takes Irwin's words as an invitation to explore concepts of temporality and permanence through the work of musicians, artists, dancers, and other cultural vanguards. Featuring innovative and irreverent experiences, Ever Present aims to question the link between what lives and what lasts.

Past

  1. Sensing the Future: LIVE

    Performance

    Black-and-white image of a stage with performers: one lies on their stomach on a wood block, another stands on another block, and a few others move around and pose. Onlookers sit in chairs.

    An afternoon of live performance reimagines works central to the legacy of Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.)

  2. Ever Present: Joan Jonas, Mirror Piece I & II (1969/2024)

    Performance

    Four individuals stand in a line outdoors, each holding a large mirror that reflects the grassy area and onlookers in front of them.

    A rare presentation of groundbreaking artist Joan Jonas's iconic performance work Mirror Piece, revisited and reconstructed for 2024

  3. Ever Present: JJJJJerome Ellis, Kerry Tribe, Maral

    Performance

    Textual graphic with the names of three performers in the foreground with a list of the names of flowers in the background.

    Artists navigate relationships to the natural world, to shifting intensities across life's phases, and to inhabiting a collision of cultures

    Sep 17, 2023

  4. Ever Present: Crystal Gazing

    Film

    A woman wearing an orange bathrobe plays a saxophone.

    A rare 16mm screening of Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen’s 1982 film Crystal Gazing

    Nov 19, 2022

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