Introduction to Performance Art
This workshop is designed for anyone interested in performance art history and practices, and anyone who wants to push the disciplinary limits of their work. Participants will be encouraged to imagine performances alone and in pairs (eg. sound poetry, manifesto, happening, body art, photo-performance, ritual etc.) while exploring a brief history of this discipline, from its emergence in the context of modernism and the avant-garde, until its consolidation and diversification of the 60s to the present. We will watch and analyze performances, define and criticize the main trends and aesthetics. We will discover a wide range of movements, concepts and forms, including Gutai, actionism, happenings, fluxus, drag, rituals, celebration, reality shows and mixed-media spectacles.
Through the analysis of key works of feminist performance artists, we will also question how and why performance art became crucial in the dismantling of standardizations regarding gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, or class. Through creative instructions, structured improvisation exercises and task-based activities, will explore our body, together with its physical capabilities and immaterial aspects, including emotion, intuition, trust, empathy and other affective economies, such as self-reflexivity, intersubjectivity, accountability, interconnection and participation.
During the classes, activities will involve: Performance-making, dance, acting, puppet theater, narrating and composing through structured-improvisation and movement; discussions, screenings and readings from texts by writers, theorists, artists; movement research ; developing scores for solo and group choreographies; creative writing in different form (poetry, manifest, comics, diary...) making exercises and creative tasks in different medium (drawing, paining, collage, video, photo, installation art, multimedia art...), searching through storytelling, personal narratives, historical material, archives and divers audiovisual resources.
Through the analysis of key works of feminist performance artists, we will also question how and why performance art became crucial in the dismantling of standardizations regarding gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, or class. Through creative instructions, structured improvisation exercises and task-based activities, will explore our body, together with its physical capabilities and immaterial aspects, including emotion, intuition, trust, empathy and other affective economies, such as self-reflexivity, intersubjectivity, accountability, interconnection and participation.
During the classes, activities will involve: Performance-making, dance, acting, puppet theater, narrating and composing through structured-improvisation and movement; discussions, screenings and readings from texts by writers, theorists, artists; movement research ; developing scores for solo and group choreographies; creative writing in different form (poetry, manifest, comics, diary...) making exercises and creative tasks in different medium (drawing, paining, collage, video, photo, installation art, multimedia art...), searching through storytelling, personal narratives, historical material, archives and divers audiovisual resources.
Photos: © Gray Box, 2016.