A person submerged in blankets reaches their hand out

Andy Giovale BFA 23 Title: Sandtimer Photo Credit: Ruby Que

Performance

Undergraduate Overview

Undergraduate Overview

The School of the Art Institute of Chicago's (SAIC) Performance department is one of the only undergraduate contemporary performance departments in the country. We are known nationally and internationally as a center for engagement, research, and experimentation of body-focused performance art practice in an art-and-design school context.

We put a strong emphasis on contemporary art with practices and theories including:

  • Live actions
  • Interactive digital technologies
  • Movement research
  • Tactical and site performance
  • Performance installation
  • Abandoned practices
  • Re-enactment/Reperformance
  • Archiving the document
  • Performance writing

The Performance program's distinguished and professionally active faculty represent a broad range of experimental performance approaches ranging from solo performance and material actions to activist participatory theater, gender performance, experimental movement performance, performance lectures, re-enactment, networked virtual performance/mixed reality, and curating.

Possible Performance Paths

Undergraduate students concentrating their BFA in Performance are encouraged to consider their art-making process as a interdisciplinary practice that can range across various departments including, but not limited to, Fiber and Material Studies; Sculpture; Performance; Fashion Design; Art and Technology / Sound Practices; Film, Video, New Media, and Animation; and Ceramics. Students are encouraged to confer with faculty to map a course of interdisciplinary study that reflects the latest developments in contemporary practices in these fields.

Below are some pathway suggestions to consider:

  • Body/Performance: Intro to Performance; The Performing Body; Performing Next Feminisms; Movement Research/Improvisation; Bodies in Motion; Durations: Long, Medium, Short; and Movement/Presence: Body as Site
  • Object Performance: Material Actions, Puppetry, and Performance and Event Production
  • Media Performance: Performance Media; Mixed Reality Performance; Performance and Video; Live Presence/Virtual Spaces; Performing for the Camera; and Fusions: Film, Video, Performance
  • Installation/Site-specific Performance: Site Practice; Tactical Performance; Event Production; and Performance Installation
  • Collaborative Performance: Systems, structures: Methods of creation; Make it Strange; Collaboration/Directing for Performance; Group Work; and Between Theatre and Performance.
  • Critical/Activist Social and Political Performance: Extreme bodies in Performance; Border Crossing; Performing Next Feminisms; and Tactical Performance
  • Performance Writing: Body/Text; Performative Writing; Scripting/Acting for Performance; and Narrative in Performance
  • Re-enactment/Reperformance: Parasitic Practices; Performing the Document; Performing Fictions; and Performance Documentation

Undergraduate Admissions Requirements & Curriculum Overview

  • To apply to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), you will need to fill out an application and submit your transcripts, artist's statement, and letters of recommendation. And most importantly, we require a portfolio of your best and most recent work—work that will give us a sense of you, your interests, and your willingness to explore, experiment, and think beyond technical art, design, and writing skills.

    In order to apply, please submit the following items:  

    Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio Portfolio

    Submit 10–15 pieces of your best and most recent work. We will review your portfolio and application materials for merit scholarship once you have been admitted to SAIC.

    When compiling a portfolio, you may concentrate your work in a single discipline or show work in a breadth of media. The portfolio may include drawings, prints, photographs, paintings, film, video, audio recordings, sculpture, ceramics, fashion designs, graphic design, furniture, objects, architectural designs, websites, video games, sketchbooks, scripts, storyboards, screenplays, zines, or any combination of the above.

    Learn more about applying to SAIC's Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio, or view our portfolio preparation guide for more information.

  • Studio69
    • CP 1010 Core Studio Practice I (3)
    • CP 1011 Core Studio Practice II (3)
    • CP 1020 Research Studio I (3)
    • CP 1022 Research Studio II (3)
    • SOPHSEM 2900 (3)
    • PROFPRAC 3900 (3)
    • CAPSTONE 4900 (3)
    • Studio Electives (48)

    PROFPRAC and CAPSTONE are now required for new incoming students beginning in the 2015-16 academic year.

    		 
    Art History15
    • ARTHI 1001 World Cultures/Civilizations: Pre-History—19th Century Art and Architecture (3)
    • Art History Elective at 1000 level (3)
    • Art History Electives (9)
    		 
    Liberal Arts30
    • ENGLISH 1001 First Year Seminar I (3)
    • ENGLISH 1005 First Year Seminar II (3)
    • Natural Science (6)
    • Social Science (6)
    • Humanities (6)
    • Liberal Arts Electives (6)
    		 
    General Electives6
    • Studio, Art History, Liberal Arts, AAP, or EIS
    		 
    Total Credit Hours120

    * BFA students must complete at least 6 credit hours in a class designated as "off campus study." These credits can also fulfill any of the requirements listed above and be from any of the divisions (Art History, Studio, Liberal Arts, or General Electives).

    BFA With Distinction—SAIC Scholars Program: The SAIC Scholars program is a learning community of BFA students pursuing rigorous study in both their academic coursework and their studio pathways. There are two opportunities for interested students to apply to the SAIC Scholars Program: at the time of admission to the school, and after they have completed 30 credits of study at SAIC. Students pursuing the latter option are required to formally submit an application to the Undergraduate Division. Once admitted to the SAIC Scholars Program, students are required to successfully complete a minimum of six designated scholars courses. Students who complete the program will graduate with distinction.

    BFA in Studio with Thesis Option (Liberal Arts or Visual Critical Studies): BFA students may complete a nine-credit, research-based academic thesis as part of their studies within the 126 credits for the BFA in Studio degree. BFA with Thesis course sequences are offered over 3 semesters through the departments of Liberal Arts or Visual and Critical Studies (VCS). Students who are interested in one of the thesis options should follow the steps outlined below in the beginning of the junior year.

    Requirements for the BFA: Studio Art with Liberal Arts Thesis

    Step One: Students are required to meet with the Chair of the Liberal Arts department in the beginning of their junior year. 

    Step Two: With the Department Chair's approval, the student enrolls in the following courses beginning in the spring term of their junior year:

    • SOCSCI or HUMANITY 3900 Academic Research and Writing (3 credits)
    • LIBARTS 4800 Undergraduate Thesis: Research/Writing I (3 credits)
    • CAPSTONE 4900 Liberal Arts Undergraduate Thesis: Research/Writing II (3 credits)

    Step Three: The completed thesis must be approved by both the Thesis II instructor and the Chair of Liberal Arts. Students must make a formal presentation and participate in the Undergraduate Thesis Symposium in their senior year. 

    Requirements for the BFA: Studio Art with Visual and Critical Studies (VCS) Thesis

    Step One: Students are required to meet with the Visual and Critical Studies Undergraduate Coordinator in or by the beginning of their junior year.

    Step Two: With the VCS Coordinator's approval, the student enrolls in the first of the three-course sequence beginning in the spring term of their junior year:

    • VCS 3010 Tutorial in Visual & Critical Studies (3 credits)
    • VCS 4800 Undergraduate Thesis Seminar: Research & Writing I (3 credits)
    • CAPSTONE 4900 VCS Undergraduate Thesis Seminar: Research & Writing II (3 credits)

    Step Three: Completion of thesis must be approved by both the Thesis II instructor and the VCS Undergraduate Coordinator. Students must make a formal presentation and participate in the Undergraduate VCS Thesis Symposium in the senior year.

    Total credits required for minimum residency60
    Minimum Studio credit42

Course Listing

Title Catalog Instructor Schedule

Description

This course introduces the student to a wide spectrum of performance forms including performance in every day life, rituals, folk forms, artists' actions, experimental dance and theatre, activist performance, and intermedia forms. Students learn the history of performance practices, explore theoretical issues , and develop individual and collaborative works. Primarily a beginner's course but open to all levels of students.

Class Number

1340

Credits

3

Department

Performance

Area of Study

Gender and Sexuality

Location

280 Building Rm 012, 280 Building Rm 012A

Description

Throughout the course, we will engage deeply with themes of the 'self', exploring the 'I' in the world. Autobiography in performance can encourage self-reflection, creation, and the exploration of one’s identity as it changes; it also allows us to imagine who we might become in the future. While using personal experience as a starting point, it is essential to forge some distance between yourself and the work when working with autobiographical material. Therefore, students will engage with the self-ish, exploring the interplay between fact/fiction, personal/political, and real/imagined. Autobiographical performance art validates the intersectionality of multiple identities through experimentation with the meanings of identity labels and the potential discovery of ways they intersect, separate, and coincide with race, gender, class, sexuality, and ability. Throughout the course, we will explore the various modes artists have utilized autobiography. An example of the artists we will examine below: Greg Wohead, Bill T Jones,Bryony Kiimmings, Selina Thompson, Zanele Muholi, Lina Iris Viktor and Lizz Aggiss. Alongside the artistic case studies, the key texts for this course include: Bruno, S. and Dixon, L. 2014. Creating Solo Performance (Oxon & New York, Routledge); Heddon, D. 2008. Autobiography and Performance (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan); Cavarero, Adriana. 2000. Relating Narratives: Storytelling and Selfhood (Oxon and New York: Routledge); Johnson, J. 2017. Killing Poetry: Blackness and the Making of Slam and Spoken Word Communities (New Brunswick, Camden and Newark, New Jersey and London: Rutgers University Press). Course work will vary but typically includes weekly performance responses in the form of studio labs, a mid-term proposal, and a solo final project.

Class Number

2461

Credits

3

Department

Performance

Area of Study

Class, Race, Ethnicity, Playwriting/Screenwriting, Public Space, Site, Landscape

Location

MacLean 2M

Description

The course looks at the role of the observer and the performer through drawing and performance. Both practices respond to each other by mapping movement and moving mappings. We will be exploring performance through drawing: drawing as a description, a medium, and a score for an embodied gesture. We will use drawing to imagine movement and to move concepts, in which drawing can act as tracing and foreseeing. Performances become descriptions and embodied drawings and vice versa. We will look at performance art, presence practice, being seen and remarking on what will remain unseen, scores, methods of performance documentation and notation, as well as drawing as mark making and thinking process. We will look at artists like Sol Lewitt, Lygia Pape, Monica Baer, among other artists at the intersection of drawing as a performance practice like Janine Antoni, David Hammons, Stanley Brown; Artists in conversations such as Paul Chan and Martha Rosler; Devin T. Mays and David Schutter; John Baldessari and Paul Thek; Matthew Goulish and Lin Hixson. We will work through texts like Walkaround Time: Dance and Drawing in the Twentieth Century by Cornelia H. Butler, Tentacular Thinking: Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Chthulucene by Donna Haraway, and 'White Elephant Art vs Termite Art' by Manny Farber.

Class Number

2489

Credits

3

Department

Performance

Location

280 Building Rm 321

Description

What does one’s emergent creative practice have to do with one’s body in the world? How do we maintain the resilience and vulnerability required of artists and art students when we already feel so vulnerable in our everyday lives? How, as audiences and community members, do we share and receive feedback generously while still honoring our own lived experiences? This course offers strategies for students to explore, reflect upon, and connect common themes and interests in the development of an emerging creative practice that will serve as the basis of their ongoing studies at SAIC and beyond. While the focus of this course will be on both embodied practices and the politics of having a body, it is open to all disciplines and areas of study. Through studio assignments, readings, viewings, and writing projects, students will generate a clearer understanding about how and why they make art, and how to continue making their work authentically.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: Must be a sophomore to enroll.

Class Number

2180

Credits

3

Department

Performance

Location

280 Building Rm 012A

Description

Artists have interacted privately and publicly in a variety of performative forms with 'stuff' such as food, sculptures, costumes, found objects, natural materials and mass-produced objects. This course investigates the ways in which material can be at the center of performance works. Through a series of assignments, students research materials from scientific, historical, phenomenological, metaphoric, symbolic, sociological and political perspectives; and produce personal and collaborative pieces in a variety of sites and settings.

Class Number

2192

Credits

3

Department

Performance

Location

MacLean 2M

Description

Combining both medieval and contemporary performance practices, this class probes the possibilities of object and figure theater performance in the outdoor setting. We will examine the Renaissance spectacles of Piero di Cosimo, the Eastern European Happenings, the public ceremonies of Welfare State International and the street protest of Bread & Puppet Theater. Exercises will explore the making of large-scale graphic image making, such as Cantastoria, Banners and Scrolls. Through group collaborations the class will learn giant puppet making techniques and construction. The class will culminate in an all class outdoor spectacle.

Class Number

1767

Credits

3

Department

Performance

Location

280 Building Rm 012

Description

The slogan “the personal is political” sounds obvious today. Artworks rooted in diverse identities, cultures, and stories have been actively produced, and some have received global attention. Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Ana Mendieta, and contemporary auto-fiction writers such as Ocean Vuong, Brontez Purnell, and Saeed Jones. It's empowering yet confusing since they are mostly sad, tragic, and heartbreaking. Should our lived experiences be traumatic since they are sellable? What is the less exploitative way to materialize our bodies and narratives in art practices? How can we talk about joy and happiness when we haven't learned culturally? In this course, we will investigate the power of identities and personal narratives, and safe ways of sharing them in art, with the aim of acknowledgment, grief, healing, and eventually celebration. This multidisciplinary course explores the wide spectrum of identities and autobiographical stories in visual art, literature, pop culture, and social media. Anchored on the conversation on how their identities and narratives have been consumed in the market, we will research how to process, reframe, and visualize our pain in order to picture a better future--referencing José Esteban Muñoz’s queer futurity. Local artists and curators will visit the class and share their experiences of materializing stories for artworks or exhibitions. Along with assignments such as readings and research writings, students develop, produce, and present their live performance pieces as midterm and final projects.

Class Number

2191

Credits

3

Department

Performance

Location

280 Building Rm 012

Description

How does a performance artist create a sustainable career and create a sustainable community in the world after college? This course will provide the nuts and bolts of how to build a career as a performance artist. We will delve into the politics of curating and representing diverse practices. Students will create their own public performance festivals in public or in site-specific spaces learning the mechanisms of getting funding and writing proposals.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: 2900 course

Class Number

2193

Credits

3

Department

Performance

Location

MacLean 2M

Description

This course will consider the ways in which performance practices can be queered - particularly through the lens of drag performance. While we will cover a selection of queer theory texts, a history of drag performance both in and out of the US, and consider contemporary examples of drag artists or artists employing drag in their work throughout the semester, students will not be expected to perform in drag (unless they so desire to!). Rather this course will encourage students to use drag as a conceptual and/or practical framework for thinking about and generating live performance work. We will think about the idea of the mask or the filter as a means for materializing personas or “altered/enhanced” states of performing, a “bodied” presence and playing with the gaze. We’ll explore how drag can encourage us to harness the anecdotal and moments of extreme intimacy, hypervisibility and vulnerability as well create distance and opacity. Image making, music/sound, text, movement and time will all be equal ingredients in our work. Drag is in constant mutation, always reflecting/confronting society and politicizing the body; this should encourage us to understand the ways in which we can hold up performance as a mirror to the world around us. Some examples of artists, groups and texts we will look at will include Sin Wai Kin, Glitch Feminism by Legacy Russell, The Chicago Black Drag Council, Zorroridrag, Pacha Queer, Drag: A British History, Joan Jett Blakk, Vaginal Davis, Audre Lorde’s Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic As Power, Linda Simpson’s Drag Explosion, Meredith Heller’s Queering Drag.

Class Number

1341

Credits

3

Department

Performance

Location

280 Building Rm 012

Description

As we move through the world, we encounter a variety of images and forms. These images and forms cover the gamut: we experience objects with varying and diverse formal properties and social meanings; we see individuals, groups, as well as non-human beings engaging these objects and each other, and in turn enacting various processes. We organize normative actions, spaces, and processes to varying degrees of consciousness, from everyday habitual actions to overtly conscious rituals and performances. Within these moments of reflexivity, within these frames, we will consider the role of site and context in the production of culture. Through an investigation of various sites (the white cube, the domestic space, wilderness or nature, and public space) we will consider the above concepts through performative actions.

Class Number

2457

Credits

3

Department

Performance

Area of Study

Community and Locality, Public Space, Site, Landscape, Public Space, Site, Landscape

Location

280 Building Rm 012
A person sitting on the floor using various materials while being recorded.

Freshman and Transfer Deadline: June 1

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Camille Casemier, “Wait, Weight Sit.” Photo by Eugene Tang