Roberto Sifuentes

This 3-week summer intensive course explores the intersection of performance and social justice, emphasizing the body as a site of resistance and defiance. Through lectures, discussions, performance exercises, and exhibition, students will investigate individual and collective strategies of defiance¿including breath, bodies taking up space, joy, rest, protest, and movement in solidarity. These acts, whether subtle or overt, these acts confront systems of power and affirm our existence.

Students will create two performance-based works¿including an installation and live performance¿culminating in a presentation at the SAIC galleries and a final public event in the 280 building. Their work will be documented and made available to students. The course will also feature two national and international guest artists/scholars who will lead workshops, lecture, and engage with student work.

The course explores the relationship between performance and social justice which takes on a greater sense of urgency today as we face what Christina Sharpe would term `immanent and imminent death¿. That is, the persistent threat of domination and the lived experience of marginalized communities. Therefore, how do we attend to physical, social, and figurative annihilation through our art practices? How can we use our defiant and deviant bodies as tools for survival and transformation?

Open to credit and non-credit enrollment.

This 3-week summer intensive course explores the intersection of performance and social justice, emphasizing the body as a site of resistance and defiance. Through lectures, discussions, performance exercises, and exhibition, students will investigate individual and collective strategies of defiance¿including breath, bodies taking up space, joy, rest, protest, and movement in solidarity. These acts, whether subtle or overt, these acts confront systems of power and affirm our existence.

Students will create two performance-based works¿including an installation and live performance¿culminating in a presentation at the SAIC galleries and a final public event in the 280 building. Their work will be documented and made available to students. The course will also feature two national and international guest artists/scholars who will lead workshops, lecture, and engage with student work.

The course explores the relationship between performance and social justice which takes on a greater sense of urgency today as we face what Christina Sharpe would term `immanent and imminent death¿. That is, the persistent threat of domination and the lived experience of marginalized communities. Therefore, how do we attend to physical, social, and figurative annihilation through our art practices? How can we use our defiant and deviant bodies as tools for survival and transformation?

Open to credit and non-credit enrollment.

This studio class draws on an eclectic blend of original 'Pocha Nostra' research-based performance exercises investigating 'living dioramas', experimental performance methodologies, Suzuki, dance, ritual practice, conflict resolution techniques and other strategic forms. The techniques evolve from sacred and intimate spaces of human presence, to baroque, highly aesthetic and politicized performances of living murals, human altars, and performance jam sessions. Students create 'hybrid personas,' short performances, spoken word texts, and/or visual media pieces based on their own complex identities and personal sense of politics, race, and gender. Readings and discussions focus on performance theory, popular culture and cultural politics.

Taken every semester, the Graduate Projects courses allow students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work. Students register for 6 hours of Graduate Project credit in each semester of study.