Performing for the Camera  (4 units)
Prerequisites 524823 ST A00
Th 12:30p - 3:20p MANDE 201B

Professor: Ricardo Dominguez
Email: rrdominguez@ucsd.edu

Performance for/with/against the camera has a long and interesting history of experimentation. This course will offer an opportunity to experiment with visual recording technologies to understand their relationship to performance. Students will develop their own projects and will view and discuss performance videos and images with the class. We will also watch contemporary and classic work by Peggy Ahwesh, Critical Art Ensemble, Nam June Paik, Chris Burden, Ulay and Abramovic, Vito Acconci, Coco Fusco, Faith Wilding, Anne Hamilton, William Pope L., Maria Teresa Hincapie, Nao Bustamante, Ana Mendieta, Cindy Sherman, Adrian Piper, Sophie Calle, Patty Chang, James Luna, Surveillance Camera Players and many other artist videos and photograhps.


CATALOGUES AND BOOKS THAT ARE RECOMMENDED:

CATALOGUES:
Out of Actions (LA MoCA)
Outside the Frame: Performance and the Object (Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art)
Performance Art (edited by Roselee Goldberg)
Body and the East: Form the 60s to the Present, (Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana, Slovenia)

BOOKS:
The Twentieth Century Performance Reader, eds. Michael Huley and Noel Witts
Performance, Marvin Carlson
Contract with the Skin, Kathy Odell
Performing the Body, Amelia Jones
The Explicit Body of Performance, Rebecca Schneider
Performance Art from Futurism to the Present, Roselee Goldberg
Happenings and Other Arts, ed Mary Ellen Sandford
Unmarked, Peggy Phelan
Acting Act: Feminist Performances, eds. Lynda Hart and Peggy Phelan
Let’s Get it On: The Politics of Black Performance, ed. Catherine Ugwu
Corpus Delecti: Performance Art of the Americas, ed. Coco Fusco
Greenwich Village 1963, Sally Banes
The Blurring of Art and Life, Alan Kaprow
Imaging Her Erotics, Carolee Schneeman
The Citizen Artist: An Anthology from High Performance Magazine
Liveness, Philip Auslander
Dada Performance, ed. Mel Gordon
Futurist Performance, eds. Michael Kirby,

ONLINE
Expanded Cinema
http://www.artscilab.org/expandedcinema.html


Sept 23 - Introduction to the Class:

Opening discussion of what performance is, and what are the multidisciplinary influences. What are the contexts for presentation and documentation, what is the relationship between live acts and their recording?

Sept 29th - Using the Body as a recording device

Exercise to work on before class: Choose a site where you can engage in a performance activity for at least four continuous hours. You can move for this exercise or be still. If you move, don’t leave the site you have chosen. Choose and develop a means of recording your actions/inaction AND the events or non-eventfulness around you. Try to be as aware as possible of the smallest of changes in your own body, mind and immediate environment – don’t just wait for something really noticeable to happen. Do not use any cameras or electronic recording devices. Limit yourself to what you can commit to memory, write down or otherwise record with some part of your body. Once you have completed your action chronicle the experience in writing if you have not already written it down. Keep in mind that while writing is PERMITTED, it is not the ONLY way to make a record of actions, so consider other means too!

BRING DOCUMENTATION TO CLASS. In class we will review and discuss everyone’s documentation.

Oct 7 - Using any type of camera record Only Segments of your Body doing the same performance you did last week.

BRING DOCUMENTATION TO CLASS. In class we will review and discuss everyone’s documentation.

Oct 14 - Making for the camera.

Using any type of camera record a performance of you making something.
Many performances involve making, from concrete objects to ephemeral or immaterial things, to traces of actions, to records of actions, to waste products resulting from actions. Choose one of these approaches and develop a performance that is organized around the act of making.

BRING DOCUMENTATION TO CLASS. In class we will review and discuss everyone’s documentation.

Oct 21 - Performance photographs, performing for photographs

Most of the history of performance is actually known through photographs. Many performance artists rejected the use of photographic documentation in the 50s and 60s, and also elaborated a critique of the objectification of performance through photography. On the other hand, many artists create performances exclusively for the camera. For this session, students must choose to create one of two kinds of performance – either a performance that incorporates the process of photographing the artist into the act itself (other students can act as photographers) or a performance that is presented as a photograph or series of photographs.

BRING DOCUMENTATION TO CLASS. In class we will review and discuss everyone’s documentation.

Oct 28th - Camera as Performer

For this session use any video camera as the performer. Create a performance that records the process of recording to be the performance itself. You could record your camera recording your performance. You could the have camera become a character that you encounter or you could have an intimate moment between two cameras.

BRING DOCUMENTATION TO CLASS. In class we will review and discuss everyone’s documentation.

Nov 4 - The Camera and the Unseen

For this session use any type of camera to create a performance that
does not capture the performance - but  still records the performance. You could record the audience who is watching you or you could record the objects next to your performance.

BRING DOCUMENTATION TO CLASS. In class we will review and discuss everyone’s documentation.

Nov 11 - No Class

Nov 18  - The Camera and the Naked Self

For this session use any type of camera to create a performance of your
naked self. Use the camera as a confession machine or as a disciplinary
machine. Let your self be a naked self before the camera. You could
tell us secrets, show us your tattoos or sit naked eating lunch.

BRING DOCUMENTATION TO CLASS. In class we will review and discuss everyone’s documentation.

Dec 2nd - The Camera and the Distributed

For this session use any type of camera to create a performance to be
distributed via networks: specifically video-ready PDAs.

BRING DOCUMENTATION TO CLASS. In class we will review and discuss everyone’s documentation.

Dec 9th  - The Camera and the Death Bed

For this session use any type of camera to create a performance recording of your last will and testament to be viewed at your wake.

BRING DOCUMENTATION TO CLASS. In class we will review and discuss everyone’s documentation.