Course detail

Studio III - Performance - summer

FaVU-B3PE-LAcad. year: 2020/2021

The art of performance - the most striking means of contemporary action art, connected to happenings, events and other activities, a frontier form of fine arts, focused directly on creative action in a time-space situation, in real time and natural environment, an intermediate speech combining certain aspects of traditional theatre, dance, literature, artistic and architectonic, in the current context of an action-environment focusing on new media: video, digital, photography, and communication technologies

Performance art focuses on the nature of the creative act. It blends through all forms of contemporary artistic expression. Current performance is expressed via any media. From individual awareness, body and new technology to social interactions and environmental activism. The free art of the event includes a wide range of live information, engaging with the art of interaction, mediation and presentation, with the full potential of personality, including multimedia technologies and digital imaging - working with the imagination.

Language of instruction

Czech

Number of ECTS credits

15

Mode of study

Not applicable.

Guarantor

Learning outcomes of the course unit

The studio’s projects are based on independent artistic creation, which is presented primarily in galleries, museums and other public and alternative spaces. The studio aims to reach the quality of a basic experimentation process on an exclusive professional level, develops creative methods from sensation through imagination over inspiration to intuition.

Prerequisites

Mastering the theory and practice of the subject.

Co-requisites

Not applicable.

Planned learning activities and teaching methods

Teaching takes place in the form of group consultations of the teacher with the students about the assigned semestral tasks. Teaching includes lectures and workshops on semester (theme) topics provided by external lecturers.

Assesment methods and criteria linked to learning outcomes

Credit for the course is granted upon successful completion and presentation of a semester projekt, submission of a printed portfolio of works, and the presentation of the semester work at the faculty Open House Days. Participation in studio class and studio projects is mandatory for course completion.

Course curriculum

3rd YEAR Image of Motion – ”composition in time”

6th semester: FIGURE IN MOVEMENT (gesture / dance) – BIOLOGICAL RHYTHM

biological time-space – subject, speech

movement and energy – thinking and language, etymology and semiotics

the speech of a picture: the origin of an image in the visual gesture – action painting (GUTAI)

the music of speech: the origin of music in the acoustic gesture – oral tradition, narration, singing, dramatization, rhetoric (Butó )

script as a fixed sign, graphology – practical exercises in calligraphy

”gestic action” (Herman NITSCH / Vienna Actionists)

Work placements

Not applicable.

Aims

The Performance Studio develops the abilities to combine and integrate various artistic means of expression into the complexity of an artwork. The cognition and control of the methods of presentation results in the ability to enter and intervene in reality creatively. The studio is built around profound teachings of a human being as a physical, psychological and spiritual being including the transcendent dimension. This teaching method attempts to gain the knowledge about the world and human beings through the approach of inner training, which leads the mature persons towards the freedom of their individuality. The students must find themselves, their worldview, their circle of fellow-beings and their roles in the world, through their own experience. The task of the teacher is not to impose upon the students’ “self”, but to contribute to the formation of their means (body and soul) so that their individuality (esprit) can then freely handle and control these means. The teacher helps the students to remove their physical and spiritual barriers and creates the conditions through which the genius can enter life uninhibited.

The most important function of the autonomous individual life of each novice in the arts is to represent and protect the area of “pure humanity” in every situation, regardless of the political and economic interests. This individual life, together with the guarantees of the free flow of information, must be protected through academic freedom.

The most important task is not to provide knowledge as such, but to provide the art of teaching – why and in which way it is necessary to learn. The studio's aim is education in the sense of self-creation. In principle, the art of education is not about a set of pedagogical methods, but foremost is about an exemplary attitude towards life. The most important task of the art teacher is to support and socially fertilize student’s talents (not to impose on them work within a mechanistically set system of technical and economic trends). The pedagogical purpose of such a school is not to educate “programmed commercial specialists”, but universally educated people who are fully interested in the whole reality of life (thus also capable of managing their specialization). The fundamental condition for the creative individual life is the freedom of speech and freedom of expression.

The aim of the BA Program is to gain an overall knowledge and experience of the breadth of the subject (in the visual, acoustic, motor, verbal and in conceptual synesthesis) with the attention on the relations between illusion and reality, technique and creativity, knowledge and intuition, the physical and the spiritual…

Specification of controlled education, way of implementation and compensation for absences

Lessons are mandatory.

Tutorials:
about 3 hours a week

Studio praxis:
about 12 hours a week

Recommended optional programme components

Not applicable.

Prerequisites and corequisites

Basic literature

Gutai, Atsuo Yamamoto, Blusson – Paris (CS)
Nitsch, Schwarzkogler, Brus, Muehl, Writings of the Vienna Actionists, Atlas Press – London (CS)
Buto(s): arts du spectacle, Aslan Odette, CNRS editions – Paris (CS)

Recommended reading

Not applicable.

Classification of course in study plans

  • Programme VUB Bachelor's

    branch VU-IDT , 3. year of study, summer semester, compulsory

Type of course unit

 

Lecture

39 hours, optionally

Teacher / Lecturer

Seminar

156 hours, compulsory

Teacher / Lecturer