Reconceiving Space: Installation and Performance Art (edX)

This course is part of the University of Cambridge’s MicroMasters programme in Writing for Performance and Entertainment Industries.

How can we use story within the practice of art installation? What function does narrative ‘perform’ in the world of performance art? Do you want to create an interdisciplinary text as a basis for a three-dimensional site-specific piece of work? We will be looking in depth at how to find your own distinctive voice as you develop as a performance or installation artist.

Come and consider the spatial narratives of Ai Weiwei, Joseph Beuys and Kara walker. Or you may be drawn to performance artists as diverse as Maria Abramovich and Joan Jonas. Perhaps these practices are tools for you to extend your conceptual processes within another performative medium? We will be experimenting with space, language, ‘liveness’ and sound - an inspiring and freeing component of the MicroMasters!

We will be thinking comparatively about the histories of performance art and art installation, as well as considering how audience reception contributes to the creative process within these art forms. This is a comprehensive introduction to performative art forms that will give beginners a strong understanding of the essential concepts.

Flexible thinking and creativity are now essential in a diversifying global job market - come and learn essential new skills, and have fun doing it!

You will be set writing exercises over the course of the module, and you will be asked to keep a brief creativity journal to note how your ideas progress and how your intuition leads you into productivity. By the end of this module, you will have completed several new texts for use in a piece of installation or performance art. You will have been asked to reflect on the cultural significance of the work of the artists we analyze.

What you'll learn

- Specialised knowledge of histories, forms, and traditions of writing for installation and performance art, as well as the cultural contexts of innovative practitioners and practices within installation/performance art; of contemporary critical, analytical, and narrative theories of installation/performance art;

- detailed understanding of key performance components within the discipline, to include: ideational sources, body, space, image, sound, text, movement, environment.

- dramaturgical and script-editing skills within storytelling practices for performance art/installation

- developed advanced self-management skills to include working in planned and improvisatory ways, as well as the ability to anticipate and accommodate change, ambiguity, creative risk-taking, uncertainty and unfamiliarity;