Performance Art: The Live Body and its Reflection

VIS 2

Tues: 7pm ≠ 8:50pm

CENTER 115

Professor: Ricardo Dominguez

Email: rrdominguez@ucsd.edu

Performance Art is about the body for, with and against itself. The body has a long history as a site aesthetic experimentation and reflection. This course will also focus on the question sound/visual/digital recording technologies as documentation and to understand their relationship to performance as an important arc of performance art and its active reflection.

We will look at post-contemporary, contemporary and classic work by Chris Burden, Ulay and Abramovic, Vito Acconci, Coco Fusco, Faith Wilding, Anne Hamilton, William Pope L., Maria Teresa Hincapie, Nao Bustamante, Anna Mendieta, Cindy Sherman, Adrian Piper, Sophie Calle, Patty Chang, James Luna, Surveillance Camera Players and the work of many other performance artists.

Students will develop 5 short performance action every week, individually or in collaboration with other students, the class will view and discuss students performance videos and images with the specific Teaching Assistant Block they are assigned to for the quarter. Students will also be expected to Write a 10 page Final Paper (MLA) on a Performance artist, performance theme or performance genre ≠ you may want to 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.

2) Final Paper ≠ Ten Pages (30%): In the Final Paper students will frame the work have they made in class by comparing and contrasting it with work of Performance Artist covered in class. (MLA).

PAPER DUE MARCH 21^st, 2006

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, quinceaÒeras or barmitzvahs, though important, are not considered emergencies.

4) Attendance and participation (20%): I 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.

Course Website:

http://www.thing.net/~rdom/ucsd/performance1.html

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+

96-93 = A

92-90 = 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/Risk
Creativity in Presentation

A General Understanding of Performance Art/Art History
Application of Critical Connections in each of your performance

REQUIRED TEXT

Buy This Text for Class (You will save lots of cash if you order it on-line at

Amazon or Powells Books ≠ rather than have the bookstore get it). But get it!

Performance Art from Futurism to the Present, Roselee Goldberg

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0500203393/ref=pd_bxgy_img_b/102-4818180-4832106?%5Fencoding=UTF8

Or At

http://www.powells.com/s?kw=+Performance+Art+from+Futurism+to+the+Present&x=0&y=0

UCSD PRICECENTER BOOKSTORE SHOULD ALSO HAVE THEM IN

By NEXT WEEK.

CATALOGUES AND BOOKS THAT ARE RECOMMENDED:

CATALOGUES:

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:

Ethno-Techno; Writings on Performance, Activism and Pedagogy

By 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

Letπs 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,

Jan 10 ≠ - Introduction to the Class:

Opening discussion on the nature of the class, what will be expected from each of you and the grading process? What are the contexts for presentation and documentation of your 5 Gestures.

CLASS ONE

Jan 17 ≠ A History of Gestures

Reading:

Futurist Performance

http://futurism.org.uk/sintesi/

Dada Sound Poems

http://www.ubu.com/sound/dada.html

Surrealism

http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=Surrealism

Jarry, Joyce, Duchamp and Cage

http://www.toutfait.com/issues/issue_2/Articles/anastasi.html

Gesture One:

Choose a site where you can engage in a performance activity for at least 2 continuous hours. You can move for this exercise or be still. If you move, donπt 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 ≠ donπt 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 everyoneπs performance and (non-traditional documentation).

CLASS TWO:

Jan 24^th - Gestures in Public Space and Time

Read:

Theory of the DÈrive

Guy Debord

http://www.ubu.com/papers/debord_derive.html

Suzanne Lacy

http://www.suzannelacy.com/

Coco Fusco and Guillermo GÛmez-PeÒa

Couple in a Cage

Notes on crawling piece ≠ William Pope L.

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0425/is_n4_v56/ai_20544728

Rev. Billy

http://www.revbilly.com/

Yesmen

http://www.theyesmen.org/

Gesture Two:

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

CLASS THREE:

Jan 24th ≠ Ephemeral Gestures

Ground Breaker

Ana Mendiata 1

Ana Mendieta 2

Lick and Lather

http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/antoni/clip2.html

Loving Care

http://digitalconsciousness.com/artists/JanineAntoni/

Chiharu Shiota

http://archiv.hkw.de/deutsch/kultur/2001/translated_acts/shiota.html

Gesture

http://www.dianathompson.net/Gesture/g1.html

Gesture Three:

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. Each TA Block will review and discuss everyoneπs

CLASS FOUR:

Jan 31 ≠ Photographs as Gestures, Gestures for Photographs

Some Thoughts on the Work of Hannah Wilke

http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/zoebrigley/entry/deconstructing_the_feminine/

Naked truths: Hannah Wilke in Copenhagen

Art Journal, Summer, 1999 by Debra Wacks

Mariko Mori Images

More Mori

http://www.mcachicago.org/MCA/exhibit/past/Mori/

ALICIA KURI

http://hemi.nyu.edu/gallery/exhibit2_eng/alicia_statement.html

Gesture Four:

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.

CLASS FIVE

February 7^th - Naked Gestures