The Re-turn of The Performance
Weekend long workshop* for artists, students, professionals and curious scholars of any field.
Quote taken from an art-blog: “The term performance art got its start during the 1960’s in the United States. It was originally used to describe any live artistic event that included poets, musicians, filmmakers, etc. By the 1970’s the term was used broadly to describe that it was live and it was art.”
What is a performance? What is the difference between performance art and a theatrical, musical, dance or film performance? When and how does performance art interrelate with other media? How do we know when we are watching a performance piece? Are there any differences between an art piece (painting, sculpture, installation, video) and a performance piece? Is there a way to do a performance without knowing that you are doing it? Are there any accidental performances? Do we already, without knowing it, perform something? When and for what reason would we possibly need to perform? When do we need a costume and when can we just perform with our regular clothes? How long can a performance piece be? For how many people can we perform? Are we able to set limits to a performance? Does a performance piece need preparation? Does it have to be good?
The workshop will try to engage with and extend the above questions, and by doing so, search for possible shifts in performance’s construction via the position of the spectator rather than that of the spectacle. The re-turn of the performance to the spectator/listener ultimately alters the way of constructing/composing a performance piece. The aim is to focus on the different ways that this may happen and to follow the importance of gesture, rhythm and dispositif(s) that a specific sound, location, object, film or image bring to bear on the individual’s body or on the group. The presentation and the execution of a performance piece could occur then only if there are reasons or purposes to negotiate with another (individual, individuals or groups).
With a series of discussions, readings and exercises, we will figure out if performance can have an impact on someone else when, instead of being a spectacle, it becomes the spectator’s own state of understandings, commitments and views.
Georgia Sagri
*The workshop will take place every other weekend starting from February 27th-28th. The duration for each day is ten hours including twenty minutes lunch break.
Fee for each day: Students 30$, Professionals 50$
The number of participants will be limited. Please send your name, email and a brief of the reasons you would like to participate.
For further questions and rsvp email at sgeorgiaster@gmail.com
Detailed schedule, location, readings and exercises of the workshop after rsvp
Georgia Sagri was born in 1979 in Athens, Greece. She studied music (singing and cello) from the age of five and was a student in the Experimental Music High School of Athens until 1997. In 1999, after one of her public performances in Athens, she was accused of insulting national symbols and had to appear in court. In 2003 she received her post-graduate degree in Painting from the School of Fine Arts in Athens; her thesis presentation, however, was a performance piece. In 2006 she moved to New York with scholarships from the Fulbright, Leventis, Onassis and Propondis Foundations. In 2008 she received her MFA degree in Visual Arts from Columbia University. In February of 2009, Sagri presented Yze Alone, a performance piece for the National Theater in Greece. Other selected exhibitions include a solo exhibition at AD gallery, Athens (2009), On Stellar Rays Gallery, NY (2009) and Anthony Reynolds Gallery, London (2008); and group exhibitions at The Kitchen, NY (2009), Terri & Donna, Miami (2009), Harris Lieberman Gallery, NY (2009), AR Contemporary, Milan (2008), Destroy Athens, 1st Athens Biennial (2007), Deste Foundation, Athens (2006, 2001); and performances with the dance group It’s our pleasure to serve you at Smith Stewart Gallery, NY (2008) and MUMOK Museum, Vienna (2008). She is the Editor-in-Chief of the sound magazine Forté. She lives and works in New York City.
