Performance Art

Spring 2025

Tuesdays & Thursdays 1:30 - 3:20pm

Professor Jasmine Mahmoud

Find the updated syllabus here. 

COURSE DESCRIPTION

What is performance art? How does performance art as a “presentational” mode of performance differ from theater as a “representational” mode? How does “performance art” animate our understanding of the body and conceptual art, as well as of history, culture, identity, difference, and humanity? What power comes from creating performance that attends to the meanings that bodies create in space? 

This course investigates Performance Art through these questions, with a particular focus on minoritarian performance in dialogue with race, gender, indigeneity, sexuality, ability, and other forms of identity. We will study performance art across histories and themes of Fluxus and the 1960s; Risk Work and the 1970s and 1980s; HIV/AIDS performance and the 1980s and 1990;, Politics and Protest; Endurance; Rest; and Indigeneity, and Gender, Race, and Sexulaity. We look particularly at artists including Marina Abramovich, Ron Athey, Black Power Naps, Rebecca Belmore, Kat Eng, Karen Finley, Coco Fusco, Lia García, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Felix Gonzales-Torres, Tehching Hsieh, Xandra Ibarra, Erica Lord, James Luna, Ana Mendieta, Lorraine O’Grady, Yoko Ono, Okwui Opokwasili, Jefferson Pinder, Adrian Piper, and William PopeL. We will attend and write about two performance art events: Once Upon a Time in a Place called NOWhere by keyes and the nogooddoers at 12th Avenue Arts presented by Velocity Dance Center and Leviticus or Love and to walk amongst HUMANS! Book II at Kubota Gardens by dani tirrell. We will also create works of performance art in class and via assignments. In sum, we will study, discuss, write about, and create performance art! No performance experience required.