Performance

In the midst of a global crisis necessitating social distancing, insisting on disembodied contact as a way to connect, denying ready collective sensory experience, how do we recalibrate what it might mean to make performance, denied the immediacy of a live audience? How might we draw strength and emerge from this moment of unprecedented turbulence to address unequal representation in politics and culture? Doggedly drawing on the history of a medium steeped in resistance, dissent and forthright insurrection, our students have stepped up to address an uncertain cultural landscape with urgent questions. The radical potential of live art as a means to posit new forms of engagement with gender and identity politics is an insistent theme, in practices ranging from intimate solo actions to artist-directed productions populated by other performers, both live and for camera. Throughout the year, experiments in activism, experimental writing, choreography, moving image and ‘low’ entertainment have spurred on an ambitious, risk-taking spirit of curiosity in the pathway that strives to expand the definitions of performance. Whilst the physical form of these works may necessarily be compromised, the energetic diversity of research in the Contemporary Art Practice programme cannot be squashed!

Mel Brimfield, Pathway Lead, Performance