Roberto Sifuentes

This 3-week summer intensive course will explore the intersection of performance and social justice through lectures, discussions, performance exercises, and exhibition. Students will create individual and collaborative performances that explore individual and community based strategies of resistance including, but not limited to, embodiment and enfleshment, protest, resistance, talking back to power, and going under the radar. Students will create three works of performance, installation, documentation and live performance in this course where one will be presented in the SAIC galleries and the final in a public event in 280 building. Two national and international guest artists/scholars will join the course to lecture, lead workshops, and respond to 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¿ (p.13) 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?

Available for credit and non-credit enrollment.

This 3-week summer intensive course will explore the intersection of performance and social justice through lectures, discussions, performance exercises, and exhibition. Students will create individual and collaborative performances that explore individual and community based strategies of resistance including, but not limited to, embodiment and enfleshment, protest, resistance, talking back to power, and going under the radar. Students will create three works of performance, installation, documentation and live performance in this course where one will be presented in the SAIC galleries and the final in a public event in 280 building. Two national and international guest artists/scholars will join the course to lecture, lead workshops, and respond to 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¿ (p.13) 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?

Available for 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.