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“The creators of the cartoon South Park, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, are planning to stage a Broadway musical based on the lives and (many) loves of typical members of the Church of the Latter Day Saints.”

Here come the cuts.

“The Art of Participation,” installation view at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; photo: Ian Reeves, courtesy SFMOMA

Museums, as we’ve discussed, are eager to engage with their public in ways that move beyond handing out headphones. It’s all about interactivity and live art, from the Whitney’s mostly unsuccessful foray into participatory art during the last biennial (You can hear my radio spot on that here) to the Guggenheim’s current relational aesthetics show, “theanyspacewhatever.”

Now, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has upped the ante with “The Art of Participation,” a survey of interactive art that spans almost six decades. It’s the art world’s answer to Choose Your Own Adventure books:

Download Video Videographer: Tammy Fortin, courtesy SFMOMA

I spoke with the museum’s curator of media arts, Rudolf Frieling, about the new exhibit, including the pitfalls and possibilities of participatory art:

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“Les sept planches de la ruse.” Photos by Richard Termine.

I write fortified with Riesling.

I have just been to see Compagnie 111 and Scenes de la Terre’s “Les sept planches de la ruse” (The Seven Boards of Skill) at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, where it had its U.S. premiere as part of the Next Wave Festival. Call it theater, call it dance, call it cirque nouveau, whatever: no matter the genre(s), this was pure, enragingly empty, well-financed international spectacle, the kind BAM specializes in all too often these days.

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Even the undead are obsessed with this election. Photo by Andrea Silenzi

I don’t know about you all, but I’ve officially given up trying to get anything accomplished until after the election is over. I’m throwing in the towel.

But I’m also trying to avoid spending the entire day obsessing over exit polls. Instead, I am making lists - lists for you, dear reader. Below you will find lots of little clickable tidbits, always handy when your boss, sick of obsessing over polls, wanders over and wonders why your computer screen is blank.

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The Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company in “Another Evening: Serenade/The Proposition.” Photo: Paul B. Goode.

For its September 25-October 1 issue, “Time Out New York” anointed “The New York 40.” Some readers wrote in, wondering why TONY’s list of movers and shakers was almost entirely monochromatic. The editor published a response, including the following:

“…for better or worse, that list is also a reflection of New York in the past dozen years—a city whose cultural elite have been mainly white. Our Top 40 was never meant to endorse that fact, but it can’t help but reflect it.”

That, um, didn’t go over so well. Angry emails began circulating. Some of those emails were forwarded to me, and I started thinking about the state of racial politics in the arts these days: what issues are artists of color facing, what do they think of Obama’s historic candidacy in relation to their own work, what frustrates them, what are they heartened by?

I was curious. So I asked. The artists I chose to interview aren’t meant to represent any kind of cultural elite (though “The Art.Cult Five” has a nice ring to it). In fact, they aren’t meant to represent anything other than themselves: five interesting artists whose work I admire and am intrigued by, and who I thought might have thoughtful things to say about art, race and the election.

They did. And then some. The piece I did for WNYC airs today at 5:50, I am told - I’ll publish it once the link becomes available (Here it is.) Meanwhile, below you’ll find more of these artists’ thoughts, and a few of mine - after all, I’m the token white girl …

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Performance is all the rage right now in that high fashion world sometimes called the New York visual art scene. And museums strongly want in on the action. They just don’t always know quite what to do with themselves when they get some.

Colin Gee in “Dakota.” Photos by Ethan Levitas.

Meet Colin Gee, a former principal clown with Cirque du Soleil who will be performing at the Whitney as part of the new exhibit “Alexander Calder: The Paris Years.”

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Students at the Eugene Lang College, The New School for Liberal Arts, perform Blondell Cummings‘ “30/30 Meditations on the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights.” (All photos by Alexander Porter)

You might think that the performing arts and institutions of higher education would be a cozy fit, that universities and colleges would serve as rich incubators for artists. Well, sometimes. But, more often than not, performance has struggled to be taken seriously at schools, including (perhaps even particularly) the most prestigious institutions - where, as one artist quipped to me, “they think the body begins at the neck up.”

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Last night at the Duo Multicultural Arts Center in the East Village I caught the premiere of an amazing multi-media performance piece from choreographer Keely Garfield. The piece, Eva Potranspiration Cloud 9, features herself, her partner Brandin Steffensen and her daughter Vivian Ra. The three performers use simple found objects like fluorescent light tubes, trash can lids, and ironing boards to transform the theater into both living room and world stage.

Eva is the third installment in an ongoing performance cycle Garfield is working on. Here is a video of the second part First Attempt

I spoke with Garfield to learn more about what exactly is going on here…

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Photo by Scott Irvine

If you want to celebrate the Jewish New Year with song and style head over to Le Poisson Rouge tonight to see the the Sway Machinery swing in the new year with their Hidden Melodies Revealed. The band is pulling out all the stops this year. Along with a guest appearance from Arcade Fire’s Sarah Neufeld, you can witness the debut of a stop-motion animation based on singer Jeremiah Lockwood’s “Scenes From a Life of Ben Zion Kapov-Kagan.” For a preview check out this post from Nextbook. For a taste of what to expect here is a clip from last year’s performance.