Advanced Topics in Media: Video in/and Performance Art -16 Cr – FWS – Jr-Sr
Program Description
Video in/and Performance Art is an opportunity for advanced students with a background in a variety of art forms to build on their skills in the history, theory and creation of visual, performance and media art with the support of a learning community. Our focus will be on the exploration of Video Art and Performance Art as forms that have histories and practices that simultaneously draw upon traditions of experimental film and avant-garde theater while staking unique allegiances to the worlds of sculpture, photography, painting, spoken word and experimental music. We will explore these practices as creative practitioners, curators, and theoreticians of Video and Performance Art.
In Fall Quarter we will study the intertwined histories of Video Art (including Video Installation Art) and Performance Art from the 1960s to the present. We will centrally ask: How do Performance and Video Artists uniquely explore issues of race, gender, interactivity, place and the body? We will read, screen and discuss the work of artists and art historians who will help us put Video and Performance Art into historical and theoretical context. Special attention will be paid to how video and performance artists construct gender, race and other identity markers, and to video and performance artists whose identities as queers and people of color shape the creation and reception of the work. These explorations will be accentuated by creative exercises in performance and video, as well as short papers and collaborative research assignments. We will end Fall Quarter with a retreat during which students and faculty will work together to determine further areas of skill building and research to explore during Winter and Spring Quarters.
Winter Quarter will be made up of technique workshops, guest artists and longer form projects in which students will explore their own creative practices in depth. Lectures, seminar readings and a 10-15 page research paper will deepen our engagement of the material. The content of the technique workshops will be developed during the fall retreat, and may include Vocal Performance, Interactive Computing (Arduino/MaxMSP), Lighting for Film/Video, Costuming, Video Installation, etc. By the end of Winter Quarter each student will complete a proposal for a Spring Quarter project that will be exhibited for the Evergreen community. Students will also collectively curate and organize a screening and performance series that will take place during the Spring Quarter.
Winter Quarter will also include a one-week field trip to New York City to visit the Guggenheim Museum’s retrospective exhibition of performance and conceptual art by Japan’s influential Gutai artist’s collective. While in New York we will also visit other museums, galleries and performance spaces such as The Studio Museum in Harlem, The Kitchen, The Coney Island Museum and PS 122. We will visit several locations as a group, as well as having opportunities for exploring the city independently. In addition to the fee listed below, students should expect to spend $200-$300 for food and transportation in New York.
Spring Quarter will be primarily dedicated to independent work and work-in-progress critiques of the final project, as well as the organization of the screening and performance series.
For more information: http://blogs.evergreen.edu/videoperformance1213
Winter Quarter Program Fee: $1000 for Airfare, Lodging, Transportation To/From the Airport in NYC, and Museum Entrance Fees.