Joseph Ravens/Rabensdorf

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.

From Ron Athey and Kira O¿Riley, to Gwendoline Robin and Stelarc, this class explores tactics and politics for using the `extreme body¿ in contemporary performance. Pop-culture, media, and contemporary politics are examined through the lens of performance, as well as contemporary performance practice. Performance experiments, group discussions, on-going critiques, and written work are engaged as a strategy to merge art practice and theory. This is a practice-based course with material driven by the subject matter and the students¿ own work. Artists and themes explored may include: The Technological Body, The Sexual, Erotic, Pornographic Body, The Altered/ Prosthetic body, The Religious/Ecstatic body, Deprivation/Endurance/Duration, among others. In this class you will: Connect with the artist¿s body (yours) as the raw material for performance. Explore various strategies for individual and collaborative performance. Learn to operate in `Performance mode¿ with exercises to heighten your awareness of present time paired with a sense of total body performativity, and consciousness of the viewer¿s presence. Develop a collective performance vocabulary.