Department of History of Art, The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA

30 March 2012

Performativity in the Gallery: Staging Interactive Encounters

This session explores participation, liveness, interactivity, process-based performative practices and performance for the camera in interdisciplinary practices, presented in visual arts gallery spaces. Live art and other multi-art form works that combine visual arts with performing arts such as dance and physical theatre have an intricate relationship with the canon of art history. Art history has been wary of live art’s tendency to encourage increased formal and conceptual risk-taking and its interdisciplinary nature. Time-based performances have also challenged the conventions of documentation and the viewer’s access to the art experience. A live art practitioner has yet to win the Turner Prize.

The session explores new research analysing the intricate relationship between art history, live and performing arts and museum and gallery space; what it means to present, curate and create interdisciplinary performative work for gallery spaces.

Papers:

Kaija Kaitavuori (Courtauld Institute of Art) Negotiating Contracts. Participative or Relational Art in the Gallery

Amy Mechowski (Victoria and Albert Museum) Playing Ball: Friday Late, Live Art and the V&A

Claudia Marion Stemberger (artandtheory.net) Inside the Gallery Space: Curating Performative Work in Johannesburg

Cally Trench (Artist and Independent Curator) and Outi Remes (New Ashgate Gallery/Richmond the American International University London) At Play: Curatorial Notes about Playfulness

Beryl Graham (New Media Art at the School of Arts, University of Sunderland/co-editor of CRUMB) Histories of Interaction and Participation

Helen Sloan (SCAN) Like Shadows: A Celebration of Shyness

Leah Lovett (Slade School of Fine Art, UCL) Crowd Control: Negotiating Art’s Audiences

Eva Fotiadi (University of Amsterdam) From Event to Archive and to Event Again

Session Convenors:

Dr Outi Remes, New Ashgate Gallery/Richmond, the American International University, London and Dr Marika Leino, Oxford Brooks.