A person submerged in blankets reaches their hand out

Andy Giovale BFA 23 Title: Sandtimer Photo Credit: Ruby Que

Performance

Undergraduate Overview

Undergraduate Overview

The School of the Art Institute of Chicago's (SAIC) Performance department is one of the only undergraduate contemporary performance departments in the country. We are known nationally and internationally as a center for engagement, research, and experimentation of body-focused performance art practice in an art-and-design school context.

We put a strong emphasis on contemporary art with practices and theories including:

  • Live actions
  • Interactive digital technologies
  • Movement research
  • Tactical and site performance
  • Performance installation
  • Abandoned practices
  • Re-enactment/Reperformance
  • Archiving the document
  • Performance writing

The Performance program's distinguished and professionally active faculty represent a broad range of experimental performance approaches ranging from solo performance and material actions to activist participatory theater, gender performance, experimental movement performance, performance lectures, re-enactment, networked virtual performance/mixed reality, and curating.

Possible Performance Paths

Undergraduate students concentrating their BFA in Performance are encouraged to consider their art-making process as a interdisciplinary practice that can range across various departments including, but not limited to, Fiber and Material Studies; Sculpture; Performance; Fashion Design; Art and Technology / Sound Practices; Film, Video, New Media, and Animation; and Ceramics. Students are encouraged to confer with faculty to map a course of interdisciplinary study that reflects the latest developments in contemporary practices in these fields.

Below are some pathway suggestions to consider:

  • Body/Performance: Intro to Performance; The Performing Body; Performing Next Feminisms; Movement Research/Improvisation; Bodies in Motion; Durations: Long, Medium, Short; and Movement/Presence: Body as Site
  • Object Performance: Material Actions, Puppetry, and Performance and Event Production
  • Media Performance: Performance Media; Mixed Reality Performance; Performance and Video; Live Presence/Virtual Spaces; Performing for the Camera; and Fusions: Film, Video, Performance
  • Installation/Site-specific Performance: Site Practice; Tactical Performance; Event Production; and Performance Installation
  • Collaborative Performance: Systems, structures: Methods of creation; Make it Strange; Collaboration/Directing for Performance; Group Work; and Between Theatre and Performance.
  • Critical/Activist Social and Political Performance: Extreme bodies in Performance; Border Crossing; Performing Next Feminisms; and Tactical Performance
  • Performance Writing: Body/Text; Performative Writing; Scripting/Acting for Performance; and Narrative in Performance
  • Re-enactment/Reperformance: Parasitic Practices; Performing the Document; Performing Fictions; and Performance Documentation

Undergraduate Admissions Requirements & Curriculum Overview

  • To apply to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), you will need to fill out an application and submit your transcripts, artist's statement, and letters of recommendation. And most importantly, we require a portfolio of your best and most recent work—work that will give us a sense of you, your interests, and your willingness to explore, experiment, and think beyond technical art, design, and writing skills.

    In order to apply, please submit the following items:  

    Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio Portfolio

    Submit 10–15 pieces of your best and most recent work. We will review your portfolio and application materials for merit scholarship once you have been admitted to SAIC.

    When compiling a portfolio, you may concentrate your work in a single discipline or show work in a breadth of media. The portfolio may include drawings, prints, photographs, paintings, film, video, audio recordings, sculpture, ceramics, fashion designs, graphic design, furniture, objects, architectural designs, websites, video games, sketchbooks, scripts, storyboards, screenplays, zines, or any combination of the above.

    Learn more about applying to SAIC's Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio, or view our portfolio preparation guide for more information.

  • Studio69
    • CP 1010 Core Studio Practice I (3)
    • CP 1011 Core Studio Practice II (3)
    • CP 1020 Research Studio I (3)
    • CP 1022 Research Studio II (3)
    • SOPHSEM 2900 (3)
    • PROFPRAC 3900 (3)
    • CAPSTONE 4900 (3)
    • Studio Electives (48)
    		 
    Art History15
    • ARTHI 1001 World Cultures/Civilizations: Pre-History—19th Century Art and Architecture (3)
    • Art History Elective at 1000 level (3)
    • Art History Electives (9)
    		 
    Liberal Arts30
    • ENGLISH 1001 First Year Seminar I (3)
    • ENGLISH 1005 First Year Seminar II (3)
    • Natural Science (6)
    • Social Science (6)
    • Humanities (6)
    • Liberal Arts Electives (6)
    		 
    General Electives6
    • Studio, Art History, Liberal Arts, AAP, or EIS
    		 
    Total Credit Hours120

    * BFA students must complete at least 6 credit hours in a class designated as "off campus study." These credits can also fulfill any of the requirements listed above and be from any of the divisions (Art History, Studio, Liberal Arts, or General Electives).

    BFA With Distinction—SAIC Scholars Program: The SAIC Scholars program is a learning community of BFA students pursuing rigorous study in both their academic coursework and their studio pathways. There are two opportunities for interested students to apply to the SAIC Scholars Program: at the time of admission to the school, and after they have completed 30 credits of study at SAIC. Students pursuing the latter option are required to formally submit an application to the Undergraduate Division. Once admitted to the SAIC Scholars Program, students are required to successfully complete a minimum of six designated scholars courses. Students who complete the program will graduate with distinction.

    BFA in Studio with Thesis Option (Liberal Arts or Visual Critical Studies): BFA students may complete a nine-credit, research-based academic thesis as part of their studies within the 126 credits for the BFA in Studio degree. BFA with Thesis course sequences are offered over 3 semesters through the departments of Liberal Arts or Visual and Critical Studies (VCS). Students who are interested in one of the thesis options should follow the steps outlined below in the beginning of the junior year.

    Requirements for the BFA: Studio Art with Liberal Arts Thesis

    Step One: Students are required to meet with the Chair of the Liberal Arts department in the beginning of their junior year. 

    Step Two: With the Department Chair's approval, the student enrolls in the following courses beginning in the spring term of their junior year:

    • SOCSCI or HUMANITY 3900 Academic Research and Writing (3 credits)
    • LIBARTS 4800 Undergraduate Thesis: Research/Writing I (3 credits)
    • CAPSTONE 4900 Liberal Arts Undergraduate Thesis: Research/Writing II (3 credits)

    Step Three: The completed thesis must be approved by both the Thesis II instructor and the Chair of Liberal Arts. Students must make a formal presentation and participate in the Undergraduate Thesis Symposium in their senior year. 

    Requirements for the BFA: Studio Art with Visual and Critical Studies (VCS) Thesis

    Step One: Students are required to meet with the Visual and Critical Studies Undergraduate Coordinator in or by the beginning of their junior year.

    Step Two: With the VCS Coordinator's approval, the student enrolls in the first of the three-course sequence beginning in the spring term of their junior year:

    • VCS 3010 Tutorial in Visual & Critical Studies (3 credits)
    • VCS 4800 Undergraduate Thesis Seminar: Research & Writing I (3 credits)
    • CAPSTONE 4900 VCS Undergraduate Thesis Seminar: Research & Writing II (3 credits)

    Step Three: Completion of thesis must be approved by both the Thesis II instructor and the VCS Undergraduate Coordinator. Students must make a formal presentation and participate in the Undergraduate VCS Thesis Symposium in the senior year.

    Total credits required for minimum residency60
    Minimum Studio credit42

Course Listing

Title Catalog Instructor Schedule

Description

This course introduces the student to a wide spectrum of performance forms including performance in every day life, rituals, folk forms, artists' actions, experimental dance and theatre, activist performance, and intermedia forms. Students learn the history of performance practices, explore theoretical issues , and develop individual and collaborative works. Primarily a beginner's course but open to all levels of students.

Class Number

1502

Credits

3

Department

Performance

Area of Study

Gender and Sexuality

Location

280 Building Rm 012

Description

This course interrogates the theory and practice of body based performance by exploring innovative ways of creating with, and thinking about the untrained body. The ethos of the course is to encourage students to question the function and boundaries of the body in performance and everyday life. What happens when the body can't go on, but must go on? Through a series of intensive workshops and discussions, students will interrogate and redefine notions such as control, virtuosity, discipline, stamina and skill to establish the parameters of what a body is unable physically to do or signify, and how may this failure be used for other ends.

Class Number

2050

Credits

3

Department

Performance

Location

280 Building Rm 012

Description

Throughout the course, we will engage deeply with themes of the 'self', exploring the 'I' in the world. Autobiography in performance can encourage self-reflection, creation, and the exploration of one¿s identity as it changes; it also allows us to imagine who we might become in the future. While using personal experience as a starting point, it is essential to forge some distance between yourself and the work when working with autobiographical material. Therefore, students will engage with the self-ish, exploring the interplay between fact/fiction, personal/political, and real/imagined. Autobiographical performance art validates the intersectionality of multiple identities through experimentation with the meanings of identity labels and the potential discovery of ways they intersect, separate, and coincide with race, gender, class, sexuality, and ability.
Throughout the course, we will explore the various modes artists have utilized autobiography. An example of the artists we will examine below: Greg Wohead, Bill T Jones,Bryony Kiimmings, Selina Thompson, Zanele Muholi, Lina Iris Viktor and Lizz Aggiss. Alongside the artistic case studies, the key texts for this course include: Bruno, S. and Dixon, L. 2014. Creating Solo Performance (Oxon & New York, Routledge); Heddon, D. 2008. Autobiography and Performance (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan); Cavarero, Adriana. 2000. Relating Narratives: Storytelling and Selfhood (Oxon and New York: Routledge); Johnson, J. 2017. Killing Poetry: Blackness and the Making of Slam and Spoken Word Communities (New Brunswick, Camden and Newark, New Jersey and London: Rutgers University Press).
Course work will vary but typically includes weekly performance responses in the form of studio labs, a mid-term proposal, and a solo final project.

Class Number

2053

Credits

3

Department

Performance

Area of Study

Class, Race, Ethnicity, Playwriting/Screenwriting, Public Space, Site, Landscape

Location

MacLean 2M

Description

What does one¿s emergent creative practice have to do with one¿s body in the world? How do we maintain the resilience and vulnerability required of artists and art students when we already feel so vulnerable in our everyday lives? How, as audiences and community members, do we share and receive feedback generously while still honoring our own lived experiences?

This course offers strategies for students to explore, reflect upon, and connect common themes and interests in the development of an emerging creative practice that will serve as the basis of their ongoing studies at SAIC and beyond. While the focus of this course will be on both embodied practices and the politics of having a body, it is open to all disciplines and areas of study. Through studio assignments, readings, viewings, and writing projects, students will generate a clearer understanding about how and why they make art, and how to continue making their work authentically.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: Must be a sophomore to enroll.

Class Number

2052

Credits

3

Department

Performance

Location

280 Building Rm 012A

Description

Artists have interacted privately and publicly in a variety of performative forms with 'stuff' such as food, sculptures, costumes, found objects, natural materials and mass-produced objects. This course investigates the ways in which material can be at the center of performance works. Through a series of assignments, students research materials from scientific, historical, phenomenological, metaphoric, symbolic, sociological and political perspectives; and produce personal and collaborative pieces in a variety of sites and settings.

Class Number

1508

Credits

3

Department

Performance

Location

MacLean 2M

Description

Combining both medieval and contemporary performance practices, this class probes the possibilities of object and figure theater performance in the outdoor setting. We will examine the Renaissance spectacles of Piero di Cosimo, the Eastern European Happenings, the public ceremonies of Welfare State International and the street protest of Bread & Puppet Theater. Exercises will explore the making of large-scale graphic image making, such as Cantastoria, Banners and Scrolls. Through group collaborations the class will learn giant puppet making techniques and construction. The class will culminate in an all class outdoor spectacle.

Class Number

1509

Credits

3

Department

Performance

Location

280 Building Rm 012

Description

This course looks at the role of the observer and the performer through drawing and performance. Both practices respond to each other by mapping movement and moving mappings. We explore performance through drawing as a description, a medium, and a score for an embodied gesture. We use drawing to imagine movement and to move concepts, in which lines can act as tracing and foreseeing. Performances become descriptions and embodied marks and vice versa. We will look at performance art, presence practice, being seen and remarking on what will remain unseen, scores, methods of performance documentation and notation, as well as drawing as an embodied mark making and thinking process. We will look at artists like Francis Alÿs, Lygia Pape, The Gutai Group, Valie Export, Remy Charlip, Amy Sillman, among many other artists at the intersection of drawing as a performance practice like Janine Antoni, David Hammons, Stanley Brown, Raven Chacon, Joan Jonas; Artists in conversations such as Paul Chan and Martha Rosler, John Divola and William Camargo, Matthew Goulish and Lin Hixson. We will work through texts like Keeping Score: Notation, Embodiment, and Liveness by Hendrik Folkerts, Walkaround Time: Dance and Drawing in the Twentieth Century by Cornelia H. Butler, The Aesthetics of the Performative by Erika Fischer Lichte, Death of the Author by Roland Barthes, and How to Disappear: Notes on Invisibility in a Time of Transparency by Akiko Busch. Working in and with public space as surface, students should expect to blur the lines between traditional and non-traditional drawings and performances. All formats will be approachable, self determined, nothing more or less than walking if you so choose.

Class Number

2338

Credits

3

Department

Performance

Area of Study

Community & Social Engagement, Public Space, Site, Landscape

Location

280 Building Rm 012

Description

This course looks at the role of the observer and the performer through drawing and performance. Both practices respond to each other by mapping movement and moving mappings. We explore performance through drawing as a description, a medium, and a score for an embodied gesture. We use drawing to imagine movement and to move concepts, in which lines can act as tracing and foreseeing. Performances become descriptions and embodied marks and vice versa. We will look at performance art, presence practice, being seen and remarking on what will remain unseen, scores, methods of performance documentation and notation, as well as drawing as an embodied mark making and thinking process. We will look at artists like Francis Alÿs, Lygia Pape, The Gutai Group, Valie Export, Remy Charlip, Amy Sillman, among many other artists at the intersection of drawing as a performance practice like Janine Antoni, David Hammons, Stanley Brown, Raven Chacon, Joan Jonas; Artists in conversations such as Paul Chan and Martha Rosler, John Divola and William Camargo, Matthew Goulish and Lin Hixson. We will work through texts like Keeping Score: Notation, Embodiment, and Liveness by Hendrik Folkerts, Walkaround Time: Dance and Drawing in the Twentieth Century by Cornelia H. Butler, The Aesthetics of the Performative by Erika Fischer Lichte, Death of the Author by Roland Barthes, and How to Disappear: Notes on Invisibility in a Time of Transparency by Akiko Busch. Working in and with public space as surface, students should expect to blur the lines between traditional and non-traditional drawings and performances. All formats will be approachable, self determined, nothing more or less than walking if you so choose.

Class Number

2338

Credits

3

Department

Performance

Area of Study

Community & Social Engagement, Public Space, Site, Landscape

Location

280 Building Rm 012

Description

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.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: 2900 course

Class Number

1583

Credits

3

Department

Performance

Location

280 Building Rm 012A

Description

This course delves into cabaret as a provocative and dynamic form of performance art, tracing its origins from 19th-century Paris to today¿s global reinterpretations. Through examining cabaret's evolution¿its roots in political satire, subversion, and social critique¿we will explore how cabaret has influenced theater, music, and performance art across diverse cultural landscapes. We¿ll analyze iconic works from the Weimar era, drag cabaret, and modern-day immersive performances, pairing discussions with hands-on workshops in storytelling, sound, movement, and improvisation. This course invites students to craft their own performance pieces, embodying cabaret's spirit of innovation, resistance, and transformation.

Class Number

1503

Credits

3

Department

Performance

Location

280 Building Rm 012

Description

This class explores the intersection between performance and animal studies, exploring issues of ethics and exploitation in relation to living bodies of all forms. We will use a series of documents of performance artists and animals as jumping off points to consider our experience and understanding of language and space, presence and perception, instinct and empathy. We will consider the intimacy and potentially transgressive behaviors of the solo artist and the domestic animal: Carolee Schneeman and her cats, Ange Bartram and her dog. We will also interrogate the images and notions of the untamed and the untrained from Joseph Beuys coyote to La Monte Young's compositions that included 'any number of butterflies'. The use of the animal as material will also be explored, from the anonymous open carcasses used by the Viennese Actionists to the consumption of animal derived food as performative act. We will cover broad questions of spectatorship and participation from the theater and the zoo to the abattoir, as well as histories of animal impersonation from the trickster to the nativity play donkey and the pantomime horse. This class will culminate in a day long conference to which students may contribute lectures, performances, videos, papers or other negotiable forms.

Class Number

1504

Credits

3

Department

Performance

Location

280 Building Rm 012

Description

How do we perform acts of kindness for our communities and ourselves? What does and can, kindness and care look like as an act and actions of expanded performance. How do we create and cultivate practices of everyday life that shift and transform? What inspires a stranger to be kind to another? What motivates someone to step out of their bubble and go out of their way to help a person they don¿t know? This Capstone class will create unconventional collaborations inside and outside of SAIC, considering careful and caring ways to work with each other and other members of our community in the city of Chicago.
People we will look at in this course include William Kentridge, Doris Salcedo, Carrie Mae Weems. Michael Landy, Christine Sun Kim, Tania Bruguera, Catherine Sullivan. Podcasts On Being, Hidden Brain, and writings of Katherine May, Sharon Brous, Lisa Samuels and Early AIDS Epidemic Nurses Ellen Matzer and Valery Hughes. We will also work with AIDS Foundation Chicago and Howard Brown Health Centre.
Coursework will include:
1. Present a proposal with your CAPSTONE intentions that considers models of kindness and actions of self and others in the community
2. Complete a focused body of work that is presented at Howard Brown Health Centre or AIDS Foundation Chicago
3. Develop exit strategies for how to sustain a practice outside of the institute through public community engagements.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: 3900 course

Class Number

2352

Credits

3

Department

Performance

Area of Study

Class, Race, Ethnicity, Community & Social Engagement, Gender and Sexuality

Location

MacLean 2M

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