Performance art creates new and exciting challenges for how we read, understand, and value contemporary art. This course explores how artists have used performance as a set of artistic strategies that both complement and disrupt what museums can exhibit. This course will explore both well-known and lesser-known practices in performance art – as well as its documentation from the late 1960s to the 1990s. We will examine works in the Tate collections – including Paul McCarthy, VALIE EXPORT, Marina Abramović, Stuart Brisley, Regina José Galindo, Song Dong, or Tehching Hsieh – as well as works that have not been included in insititutions. The course is led by Dominic Johnson, a scholar of performance art, and Reader in Performance and Visual Culture at Queen Mary University of London.
Biography
Dominic Johnson is a Reader in Performance and Visual Culture at Queen Mary University of London. His authored books include The Art of Living: An Oral History of Performance Art (2015), and his edited books include Pleading in the Blood: The Art and Performances of Ron Athey (2013).