Midway through his lecture at the Abrons Art Center last night Mark Leckey stepped away from the lectern, holding a glass in each hand. The liquid in one was clear, the other red. “Now I’m going to have a sip of” — he paused, considering his choices — “wine!”

In the Turner Prize winner's talk, “Mark Leckey in the Long Tail,” part of a three-night stand at the Lower East Side space sponsored by the Museum of Modern Art, he continually swings between such extremes. He relays historical anecdotes one moment and then launches into stream-of-consciousness poetry sessions the next. The piece was nominally billed as a discussion of how the Internet allows niche interests to thrive: Amazon can meet the needs of millions of Dan Brown fans, as well as the few interested in linguistic theory. Quite quickly, though, Leckey leaps aggressively from cybernetic theory, obscure YouTube videos, and the psychological theories of Hans Bellmer.

Leckey wore a crisp, white collared shirt and tuxedo pants in Thursday’s performance, the first in three consecutive nights of intellectual mayhem. He looked like a man prepared to instruct, and — with a wireless microphone taped to his cheek, which was periodically covered by long, flowing hair — he channeled Tom Cruises motivational speaker in Magnolia, albeit with less braggadocio. There were smoke machines, a replica of a mechanical scanner (an early television transmitting device), and multiple dolls of Felix the Cat, who takes a central role in Leckey’s 55-minute discourse.

The three nights comprise the fifth offering in the Museum of Modern Art’s new performance series, which has previously presented a retrospective (Tehching Hsieh), generated dance performances in the museum’s galleries (Simone Fori and Yvonne Rainer), and even invited museum-goers to perform, by marking their heights on the wall in a piece conceived by Roman Ondák.

Leckey’s work is the first in the series that has all the trappings of traditional performances. Ushers take tickets and welcome visitors into the Abron Arts Center’s Playhouse, a 1915 theater decorated with dignified wood panels. The audience waits for its performer in plush seats while surveying an elaborate set on stage. The only thing separating it from Broadway is a Playbill.

Preserving performance art, an indisputably understudied field, is an admirable goal, but one wonders if staging these specialized, limited-engagement events is the best use of the museum’s resources. Leckey’s work provides pure pleasure — to a highly select group aware of the performance and willing to pay the admission fee. The needs of the specialists are being met. It is not clear if MoMA’s broader audience is being as well served.