Introduction to Art Making: Motion and Time
Based:
A question of the body and its reflections as gesture.
VIS 2 Winter 2010
WED: 5:00 p.m. to 6:50 p.m.
LEDDN AUD
Professor: Ricardo Dominguez
Email:rrdominguez@ucsd.edu
Office Hour: Wed. 10:30 a.m. to 11:30 p.m.
Room: 2501 CALIT2/Atkinson Hall (2nd Fl. West Side of Building)
The body-as-gesture has a long history as a site of aesthetic experimentation
and reflection. Art-as-gesture has almost always been anchored to the body, the
body in time, the body in space and the leftovers of the body This class will focus on the history of these
bodies-as-gestures in performance art. An additional objective for the course
will be a focus on the question of documentation in order to understand
its relationship to performance as an
active frame/framing of reflection.
We will look at modernist, contemporary and post-contemporary,
contemporary work by Chris Burden, Ulay and Abramovic, Allen
Kaprow, Vito Acconci, Coco Fusco, Faith Wilding, Anne Hamilton,
William Pope L., Tehching Hsieh, Revered Billy, Nao Bustamante,
Ana Mendieta, Cindy Sherman, Adrian Piper, Sophie Calle, Patty
Chang, James Luna, and the work of many other body artists/performance artists.
Students will develop 1 performance action a week, for 5 weeks,
for a total of 5 actions (during the first part of the class),
individually or in collaboration with other students. The class
will view and discuss each students performance documentation
with the specific Teaching Assistant Block they are assigned to
for the quarter. Students will also be expected to Write an 8
page Final Paper (*MLA - Manuel of Style*) on a performance
artist, performance art, or the performance genre. The paper
should compare and contrast the above with your own gestures.
Course Requirements:
1) 5 performance gestures (10% each): You will be required to
construct a performance gesture and document the gesture. All
gestures will be done beyond UCSD and La Jolla, CA.
2) Final Paper (8 Pages) (30%): In the Final Paper students will
frame the work they have made in class by comparing and
contrasting it with the work of Performance Artist, theme or
genre covered in class. (MLA).
FINAL PAPER DUE MARCH 17th, 2010
3) *Students who have to miss any classes due to an emergency
(with documentation) will be able to take a cumulative make-up
exam during the last week of classes (dead week). Note that
social events such as weddings, anniversaries, quinceaneras or
barmitzvahs, though important, are not considered
emergencies.
4) Attendance and participation (20%): TA's will be taking
attendance every time our class meets. Aside from counting toward
your overall grade, attendance and participation will be crucial.
Students who do not show up to class and are unaware of the
material and discussions covered in lecture are not likely to
obtain a passing grade.
This website is a crucial component of this course. The site will
include the syllabus and links for review. I strongly urge you to
review the Class Site on a weekly basis.
Grading Scale:
100-97 = A+
93-96 = A
90-92 = A-
89-87 = B+
86-93 = B
82-80 = B-
79-77 = C+
76-73 = C
72-70 = C-
69-67 = D+
66-63 = D
62-60 = D-
59 and below = F
ASSESSMENT CRITERIA
PERFORMANCES
Commitment and Risk
Creativity in Presentation
A General Understanding of Performance Art/Art History
Application of Critical Connections in Each of Your
Performances and in your Class Essay
ALL REQUIRED TEXT WILL BE ON-LINE on this SITE
CATALOGUES AND BOOKS THAT ARE RECOMMENDED:
CATALOGUES:
Performa - New Visual Art Performance by RoseLee Goldberg
Art and Performance: Live (TATE U.K)
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:
Performance Art from Futurism to the Present, Roselee Goldberg
Ethno-Techno; Writings on Performance, Activism and Pedagogy, G.
Gomez-Pena
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
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,
CLASS ONE
Jan 6th - Introduction to the Class: The W(hole) Body and its
Rituals
Opening discussion on the nature of the class, what will be
expected from each of you and the grading process? Explanation of
contexts for presentation and documentation of your 5
Gestures.
WE ARE ALSO RESPONSIBLE: CESAR CHAVEZ 1971/2008: Public reenactment of a speech given by Chicano labor leader and civil rights activist Cesar Chavez at a Vietnam veterans memorial rally at Exposition Park in Los Angeles on May 2, 1971.
Gesture One:
Choose a site where you can engage in a performance activity in a Public Space for
at least 2 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. Do not 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. Each TA Block will review and
discuss everyone's performance and non-traditional
documentation.
"L'Hotel" by Sophie Calle
In 1981, Sophie Calle spent three weeks working as chambermaid in a hotel in Venice. This allowed her to spy on the guests. http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/hotel/
"He loves me not"
When a boyfriend dumped her by email, French artist Sophie Calle asked 100 women to read it
- and became the star of the Venice Biennale, reports Angelique Chrisafis
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/jun/16/artnews.art
Gesture Two:
Using any type of camera, to record only segments of your body
doing the same performance you did last week.
BRING DOCUMENTATION TO CLASS. Each TA Block will review and
discuss everyone.
A pioneer of multimedia genre-bending installations, Jessica Stockholder's site-specific interventions
and autonomous floor and wall pieces have been described as "paintings in space.
Using any type of camera record a performance of your 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. Each TA Block will review and
discuss everyones work.
CLASS FOUR: Jan 20th - Becoming Gender(s), Performing Gender(s)
Gesture Four: For this gesture use any type of camera/or docmentation to create a
performance of you as another gender, create; a disguise-as-drag,become a *third or forth* gender, build
an object that reflects your sense of gender in a public space, become
a dream gender...become gender in public space.
BRING DOCUMENTATION TO CLASS. Each TA Block will review and
discuss everyones work.
CLASS FIVE
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. You could tell us secrets, show us your tattoos or sit
naked eating lunch. Just be naked! Which does not mean that you
have to be nude. One can be over dressed and still completely
naked and raw.
BRING DOCUMENTATION TO CLASS. Each TA Block will review and
discuss everyone's effort.
CLASS SIX:
Feb. 10th - Photographs as Gestures, Gestures for Photographs
Gesture Six (Make Up Gesture for those who MISSED ONE class):
Most of the history of performance actually is 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, you
should 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, or perfomrance tha uses the photograph against the
photograph as performance and then photograph it.