The term "performance art" has been bandied about so much in the the last fifteen years that it has almost lost any sense of true meaning. Just this summer, a blockbuster movie featured as a main character a performance artist whose work consists of dumping stolen cars off bridges and riding serving trays down stairway handrails; not too long ago another film featured Mike Myers as a Jack Kerouac type who delivered spoken-word monologs on top of psuedo-jazz music. Articles in the New York Times often feature person-on-the-street quotes from individuals identified as performance artists. Matthew Barney is known as a performance artist, while his work is primarily as a filmmaker. Lost amidst the hyperbole and distortion is the initial impulse behind the movement which became known as "performance art" - the desire of artists, trained in the field of plastic arts, to transcend the object as a means of communication and to connect with the viewer in the most immediate way possible. Not through academic forms which must be adhered to out of historical inertia, or critical analyses which subvert and subjugate the artist to overly intellectualized theories, but by direct contact. Artist to viewer, present in the same time and space, without intermediaries. This is the model to which Currency 2002 seeks to return. Here at chashama, located at 135 West 42 Street in New York City, on October 3, 4 and 5 in the year 2002, artists from around the world have gathered to present their work to the viewers who have assembled before them. It is unlikely that there will be any reviews, notices in professional publications, or commercial productions which will occur as a result of this festival. The general public will barely notice that this event has taken place. Only the artists and the viewers who are physically present in this space on these three nights will have any idea of what has occurred. The artists will present to you their idea of what constitutes "performance art". Feel free to form you own opinion.

The festival also featured a gallery exhibition with contributions by prominent performance artists from around the globe. "Currency Exchange" was curated by Dan McKereghan and chashama artist-in-residence Janusz Jaworski.