Nile Harris

Nile Harris is a performer and director of live works of art. He has done a few things and hopes to do a few more, God willing.

Through performance, Harris creates immersive experiences that use the body on stage to manipulate one’s relationship to time and self-perception. Core to his art is an interrogation of cultural histories and narratives that construct and enforce systems of power that make up “the American project.” Harris often employs improvisation, embracing its inherent relationship to failure, as a critical strategy of temporal transformation inside the apparatus of the theater.

His performance this house is not a home explores absence, abjection, and American nationalism. Through the insurrection of an amplified bounce house, the ensemble performance jukes and careens in paying homage to his childhood friend and late collaborator, Trevor Bazile (1996-2021) - the two working as a collaborative duo HAZILE BARRIS. The performance, which was co-commissioned and presented by Ping Chong and Company, premiered at Abrons Arts Center in 2023 and was restaged as a part of the Under the Radar Festival in 2024.

this house is not a home emerges out of Harris’ collaborative work with Bazile, you niggas in trouble, a live Google-document-based manifesto that was performed in 2021 at the Prelude Festival in New York. Constructed as a metaphorical board meeting, the piece asks, “will the revolution have 501c3 status?” The play stars Harris, performance artist Crackhead Barney, dancer Malcolm-x Betts, and sound design by GENG PTP and slowdanger.

Harris has been making performance for nearly a decade, other works include The Rise and Fall of the Huxtable Family in 2019 at Palais de Tokyo in Paris, France, A Monkey on One’s Back (Love Laboratory) performed in 2017 at The Watermill Center in Water Mill, New York, and HIM AND HIM AND HIM AND HIM in 2017 at Dixon Place in New York, City.

As a performer, Harris has originated roles in works by Jaamil Olawale Kosoko, 600 HIGHWAYMEN, Tina Satter/Half Straddle, Robert Wilson, David Gordon, Young Boy Dancing Group, slowdanger, Ahn Vo, Alex Tartarsky, and has thought about collaborating with Sarah Michelson.

He is the director of his Brooklyn-based performance ensemble Social Security.

Harris’ first work with Ping Chong and Company was instigated through the Creative Fellowship program, where Harris was invited to make a work in response to the PCC archive: testify (the worst is yet to come) was performed in 2021 at the Under the Radar Festival’s INCOMING! series at the Public Theater in New York City. The work was a solo performance and lecture that instrumentalizes the “anonymous logic of the internet,” commenting on the distortion of identity, sourceless memes, and misinformation online. The piece became a prologue to Nile’s latest work: this house is not a home.