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Action / Re-action: Live Art, Performance & Participation - HOA00066I

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  • Department: History of Art
  • Module co-ordinator: Dr. Ana Bilbao Yarto
  • Credit value: 20 credits
  • Credit level: I
  • Academic year of delivery: 2021-22
    • See module specification for other years: 2022-23

Module summary

This module will explore the histories of live art in Europe, the U.S. and Japan from Dada and Futurist theatre to digitally mediated performance.

Module will run

Occurrence Teaching period
A Spring Term 2021-22

Module aims

This module will explore the histories of live art in Europe, the U.S. and Japan from Dada and Futurist theatre to digitally mediated performance. Against the object-based character of formalist aesthetics, and using non-traditional techniques and technologies, we will consider works that challenge the border of art and non-art with an emphasis on subversive practices intended to critique the structures of art production and display and/or everyday life. In this module we will explore key art historical and theoretical concepts such as ‘performance’, ‘theatre’ and ‘the event’, alongside practical iterations through Action Painting, Fluxus, Gutai, Viennese Actionism, Body Art and contemporary practices

Module learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should:

  • be familiar with the histories and development of live art and performance during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries

  • understand the historic contexts in which these practices emerged

  • be able to analyse the formal strategies used by artists working with performance

  • understand the key critical frameworks through which these practices have been understood

  • understand how these practices have put pressure on the category ‘art’ and traditional methods of display

Assessment

Task Length % of module mark
Essay/coursework
Action / Re-action Assessed Essay		 N/A 100

Special assessment rules

None

Reassessment

Task Length % of module mark
Essay/coursework
Action / Re-action Assessed Essay		 N/A 100

Module feedback

Students will receive feedback on their assessed formative work within one week.

Students will receive feedback on their assessed summative work within 20 working days.

Indicative reading

Stephen. C. Foster, ‘Event Structures and Art Situations’ in Event arts and art Events (Ann Arbor, 1998)

Harold Rosenberg, ‘The American Action Painters’ in H. Rosenberg, Tradition of the New (1959)

Brian O’Doherty, ‘The eye and the spectator’ in Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space, Berkeley Los Angeles and London, University of California Press, 1976

Goldberg, Roselee, Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present (2001)

Jones, Amelia, Body Art: Performing the Subject (1998)


The information on this page is indicative of the module that is currently on offer. The University is constantly exploring ways to enhance and improve its degree programmes and therefore reserves the right to make variations to the content and method of delivery of modules, and to discontinue modules, if such action is reasonably considered to be necessary by the University. Where appropriate, the University will notify and consult with affected students in advance about any changes that are required in line with the University's policy on the Approval of Modifications to Existing Taught Programmes of Study.