Contemporary Global Performance

Across the globe, there are a network of artists whose varied practices engage with the creation of symbolic forms, symbolic practices and solidarities that illuminate the global struggles of human rights, social justice reform, transnational labor and migration, gender and climate justice, wealth disparity and global capital, and decolonization. These artists use a variety of (mostly) time based and live forms — theater, social practice art, film, text/manifestos, live fora, and installation — in order to change the precepts of global citizenship and our understanding of our obligation to one another through the concept of a “global community.” This course will survey a range of contemporary artists working in this register. We will study and analyze the formal aesthetic approaches of each, thinking carefully about how the interdisciplinary form of each artist’s work offer sa nuanced and concrete account of those critical obstacles and how the artist’s also, through the work, envisions an alternative and more just arrangement of contemporary social relations.We will be studying works chosen among, but not limited to, contemporary international artists such as:
Milo Rau (Switzerland); Lola Arias (Argentina); Dora Garcia (Spain); Tania El Khoury (Lebanon); Back to Back Theater. (Australia); Rimini Protokoll (Germany); Silke Huysmans and Hannes Dereere (Belgium), Alice Ripoll. (Brazil); Akira Takayama (Japan); Bouchra Ouizguen and Compagnie O. (Morocco); Bouchra Khailili (Berlin); Gabriella Golder (Argentina), The Living and The Dead Ensemble (Haiti); Rabih Mouré and Lina Saneh (Lebanon), Nikhil Chopra (India), and Walid Raad (Lebanon and US).