Instructor:
Holland, James.

This class will introduce students to performance art as a four-fold discipline: as a historical and contemporary practice, as a powerful means of personal expression and as a path toward ecological wellness. Much confusion surrounds performance art, partly because it is difficult to institutionalize. After all, many cannot decide whether performance art constitutes theater, dance, visual art or physical exercise. And since it can pass as potentially all or none of the above, performance art remains a powerful avenue of interdisciplinary inquiry. Students, presented with daily warm up, group and individual exercises, will learn to develop collaborative and individual pieces that explore embodiment as artistic medium. Key elements covered in the class will be: Body as artistic medium, Embodied history, Alternative philosophies of the body, The Body Politic vs. the political body site-specificity