I Attended Ten of Performa’s Twelve Walking Tours and It Was…

One November day, I found myself standing in front of a building on East 40th Street, transported to the 1940’s. There, the New York-based astrologer, art critic, and pastor Daniel Larkin deftly recounted Piet Mondrian’s last years; fleeing WWII Europe to the United States and his passion for the New York’s busy streets and its jazz clubs. Larkin explained that it was the artist’s fervent enamor for the city that had thrown him out of balance, leading to his death of pneumonia at the address, then Murray Hill Hospital, in 1944. This he gathered from reading Mondrian’s astrological death chart. After, we walked to a jazz bar where we listened to boogie-woogie compositions akin to what inspired the artist’s final output. This invigorating experience that brought past and present together in an entertaining tribute to both Mondrian and the vitality of New York City was part of Performa 2025’s walking tour series Feel Me, Hear Me.

I heeded the title’s prompt. My forever love of New York pushed me to attend ten of Performa’s twelve walking tours. After reading the initial descriptions of each one, I envisioned moments that would elegantly meld seminal urban spaces with larger ideas to impart novel ways of looking at my city. Although Larkin’s, and several others, stood out, there was significant unevenness in the quality of each tour; guides infrequently engaged with contemporary issues plaguing the city, despite their obvious presence around us, such as the housing crisis, the obscene gentrification of lower Manhattan, and contemporary art’s culpability, and too often topical knowledge and form was lacking amongst the non-seasoned performers and artists turned first-time guides. Yet, like with most of Performa’s ambitious projects, there was an immense amount of care involved: the guides, producers, and participants were all deeply invested in each experience, creating intimate, sometimes spectacular, moments.

In SoHo, Performa founder and artworld legend RoseLee Goldberg beautifully articulated how integral the neighborhood was to artists during the latter half of the twentieth century. Describing an art world she helped shape, Goldberg’s charisma, knowledge, and lived experience infused the walk with unforgettable character, but even at its peak, I couldn’t divorce the past from the present. At an artist’s apartment building, my eyes fixated on all the boutique shopping label brands in an absurdly commercial area that almost had nothing to do with the past Goldberg was recounting. While Goldberg obviously is not responsible for what has happened to SoHo, explicit acknowledgement of the changes could have been provocative, fostering critical thought about art, commerce, and the downsides of the neighborhood’s evolution, fueled by its status as a hub for artists.

The same was true for McKenzie Wark’s first tour, Rave in Daylight: East Village Queer Lineages, a compelling exploration of the East Village’s queer histories that emphasized trans identity, where I refreshed myself with familiar stories and was introduced to entirely new ones. While interesting, as we crossed the street, a group of finance bros walked past us, one of them hitting the vape and remarking on how fucked up he was. Wark’s tour did not acknowledge how the East Village has gentrified away from a countercultural queer nucleus, epitomized by these gross man-child yuppies. As we physically walked forward, both Goldberg and Wark’s tours felt stuck in the past.

This lack of thoughtful engagement with contemporary New York appeared in other tours, as several featured guides were not from the city or even living in it—disconnection with our surroundings were jarring, such as taking a wrong turn or not being sure of basic facts about the area. It was Nadine Botha’s first time visiting New York, which, while conceptually intriguing to have someone lead a tour who had never actually been to the place, ended up feeling uninformative and mildly absurd. Botha structured her walk in the East Village around popular media like Seinfeld and Sex and the City, and around history like Audre Lorde’s life in the neighborhood. These references, while perhaps important to someone’s perception of the city from out of town, were inconsequential to New York now. While flaws might be okay for casual exercises, participants shelled out for these tours, which feels like a scam, especially given the abundance of free, quality public programs in the city.

Many of the guides general unpreparedness, but also on a lighter note, notions of playfulness, chance, and spontaneity created an internal conflict for my criticism: just how rigorous does a walking tour need to be? Gabriel Fontana and Cas Holman’s walk through the history of queer communities reclaiming sports activities and spaces made me reflect further on how the “standards” of specific structures are dangerously oppressive. Sports carry rules and unspoken norms that can limit participation, yet play and silliness offer inclusive, emancipatory possibilities, as Fontana and Holeman noted. The walking tour posed different barriers—I realized that I was requiring place knowledge, presentation skills, and ease of mobility, which shaped how I participated in the experiences.

Raimundas Malašauskas’s walk attempted to connect Trisha Brown’s Roof Piece (1971) and Christian Jankowski’s Roof Walk (2007) performances to fragrances. We entered a Chinatown shop to sample bootleg perfumes on a square sheet of paper with one of Malašauskas’s poems before heading to SoHo to the building where Brown’s piece was performed. Ultimately, the walk’s purpose felt unclear the tour description promised that “the city becomes a moving hologram,” but it turned out to be a meandering, chilly walk, with Malašauskas coming off as checked out and indifferent. Malašauskas and Botha showed that it’s not enough to just show up to a place and expect the connections to happen; rather, there needs to be a more concerted effort to orchestrate a cohesive experience.

The most successful tours simultaneously inhabited present-day New York while integrating the past through memory and carefully selected histories. American, Theater and Performance Studies critic Tavia Nyong’o’s Memories of Love, Eternal Youth, and Party Going was a touching ode to the queer performance spaces of the Lower East Side that also acknowledged the extreme dimes-square-ification of the area. Co-led by drag and multidisciplinary performance artist Paris Alexander, the event started at Dixon Place and traveled through the Bowery Ballroom, Congee Village, Seward Park & Library, and the Abrons Art Center. At each iconic location, the guides shared personal recollections as performers, engaged in playful tambourine-filled interactions with the group, delivered impromptu poetry and music, and mused on Party Girl (1995) starring Parker Posey. Both Nyong’o and Alexander shared a perceptible kinship whose chemistry was infectiously delightful, which was essential because, as practiced performers, they could confidently execute the assignment of guiding a tour.

Walking itself is New York, something deeply embedded in the culture, where the quotidian can become profound. Portions of Feel Me, Hear Me made me wholeheartedly believe in walking tours as phenomenally generative frameworks, but the task for future iterations is to ensure that each tour does not obfuscate the present and instead probes its nuances.

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