🔵 🔴 🟡 Course description

The aim of the course is to present contemporary approaches to performance art of the 20th and 21st centuries, through the relationship between the body, public space and technology, focusing on the poetic, site-specific and technological extensions of performative gesture. Through selected artistic examples and theories, the course first attempts to analyze the basic characteristics of performance art (body, time, repetition, space, objects, technologies, audience, etc.), as well as to explore the visual and sensory relationship of performative gesture with public space through peripatetic and site-specific approaches in combination with digital media and technologies. The course aims to develop and create artistic thinking as well as to understand the ways of shaping a performative gesture, focusing on the conception and creation of artistic works in the practical part of the course.

• To analyze and understand the conceptual, historical and aesthetic characteristics of performance art.
• Apply performative methodologies and incorporate audiovisual media into the creation of a performance art project
• To recognize the importance of the body, the specificity, the duration/ephemerality, the walking process, the objects and the space and to be able to apply various combinations of these in a performance art work.
• To be able to evaluate the convergences of performance art with the fields of art installations and technologically augmented approaches (virtual reality, new media)
• To be able to compose and create hybrid starting points for artistic practice and research based on dynamic relationships between body, conceptual thinking and technology.

🔵 🔴 🟡 Theory (2 hours)

1. Historical trajectories of performance art and course objectives
2. The performative gesture and the paradox
3. Performing line and shapes: Body and visual Extensions
4. Performing the physical: Body and geopoetics
5. Performing the text: Words, textual extensions and scores
6. Walking in performance I: Flanerie, Psychogeography and aesthetic walking
7. Walking in Performance II: Performance and public space
8. Walking in Performance III: Locative media and mappings
9. Sound walks and performance: Environment, experience, ephemeral
10. Performing Time: Duration, repetition, ephemeral
11. Performing the space and the audience: Participatory forms of performance
12. Guest Artist Talk I – Course Review
13. Course Review

🔵 🔴 🟡 Workshop (1 hour)

1. Shaping the performative gesture: idea, body, space (I)
2. Shaping the performative gesture: idea, body, space (II)
3. Figure: poetic and physical extensions
4. Repetition: poetic and physical extensions
5. Rhythm: poetic and physical extensions
6. Subject: poetic and physical extensions
7. Peripatetic gestures I (the solitary body) Flanerie (planitas)
8. Ambulatory gestures II: (the common body) Psychogeography
9. Ambulatory gestures III: (the augmented body) GPS / Photogrammetry
10. Going for a walk with a sound: Soundscape focus / sound intervention
11. Time with different materials: poetic and physical extensions
12. Student Project Feedback I
13. Student Project Feedback II

Review language: Greek

🔵 🔴 🟡 Evaluation method:

• 50% artwork (performance for camera)
• 40% creative exercises (performance for camera)
• 10% written justification of the project

• Face-to-face
• Use of PowerPoint and audio-visual examples (13 lectures)
• Support of the learning process through eClass with weekly provision of audiovisual material, links, photos, extra bibliography and related information (exhibitions, cultural institutions, etc.)

https://eclass.uop.gr/courses/374/ 

🔵 🔴 🟡 Course Textbooks [Eudoxus]

• Avgitidou, A. (eds.) Public Art, Public Sphere, University Studio Press.
• Zafeiropoulos, Th. (eds.) (2024). HERE: Place, Landscape, Space, Time: Artistic practices & interpretative approaches. Tziolas Publications.
• Daflos, K. (2015). Performative Art Practices. Kallipos eBook [e-manual]
• Avgitidou, A. (2023). Introduction to the Practice of Performance in the Visual Arts Kallipos eBook [e-manual]

Extra Bibliography

• Goldberg, R. (2001). Performance art: From Futurism to the present. Thames & Hudson.
• Taylor, D. (2016). Performance. Durham : Duke University Press.
• Magrane, E., Russo, L., De Leeuw, S, Perez-Santos (2020). Geopoetics in Practice. Routledge.
• Wood, C. (2019). Performance in Contemporary Art. London: TATE Publ.
• Jones, A. And Heathfield, A. (2012). Perform, Repeat, Record. Bristol: Intellect.
• Kirby, M. (1965). Happenings: An Illustrated Anthology. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co.
• Carr, C. (2008). On Edge: Performance at the end of the 20th century. Wesleyan University Press.
• Phelan, P. (2012). Live Art in L.A.: Performance in Southern California 1970-1983. London: Routledge
• Johnson, D. (2015). The Art of Living: An oral history of Performance Art. NY: Palgrave
• Heathfield, A. (2015). Live: Art and Performance. London: Tate Publishing
• Pena-Gomez, G. and Sifuentes, R. (2011) Exercises for Rebel Artists: Radical Performance Pedagogy. London: Routledge
• Schimmel, P. (1998). Out of Actions: Between Performance and the Object. Thames & Hudson.
• Sayre, H. (1989). The Object of Performance. University of Chicago Press.
• Kaprow, A. (1966). Assemblages, Environments and Happenings. Published various.
• Kaprow, A. (2005). Allan Kaprow: Fluids. Cologne: Verlag.
• Avgitidou A. and Vamvakidou, I. (eds.) (2014). Performance Now V. 1: Performative Practices in Art and InSitu Actions. ION
• Avgitidou, A. (2020). Performance Art: The Basics - A beginners course guide. Thessaloniki: University Studio Press (English)
• Adamopoulou, A. (ed.) (2014). Body Language: Notes on Performance. School of Fine Arts, P. Ioann.
• Rigopoulou, P. (2003). The Body. Plethron Publications.
• Buchloh, Foster, Krauss (2013). Art since 1900. Epikentro Publications.
• Ferrer, M. & Colas Adler, M. (eds.) (1989). Groups, Movements, Trends in Contemporary Art 1945-. Exandas Publications
• Stiles, K. & Howard Selz, P. (eds.) (1996). Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art. U.C. Press.
• Davila, T. & Fr.churet, M. (eds.) (2001). Francis Alys. Paris: Seuil.
• Salter, C. (2010). Entangled: Technology and the Transformation of Performance. MIT Press.
• O’Reilly, S. (2009). The Body in Contemporary Art. Thames & Hudson.
• Daflos, K. (2015). Tactics of technopolitical media. Athens: Kallipos

Bibliography on walking practice, performance and public space

• Solnit, R. (2001). Wanderlust: A History of Walking. NY: Penguin Books.
• Gros, F. (2015). Walking. Athens, Potamos Publications
• De Certeau, M. (1984). The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: UOC
• Lacy, S. (1995). Mapping the terrain: New genre public art. Seattle: Bay Press.
• Tester, K. (ed.) (1994). The Flâneur, London: Routledge
• Careri, F. (2002). Walkscapes: Walking as an Aesthetic Practice. Gustavo Gili
• O’Rourke, K. (2013). Walking and Mapping: Artists as Cartographers. The MIT Press.
• Kaye, N. (2000). Site-Specific Art: Performance, Place and Documentation. Routledge.
• Smith, P. (2015). Walking’s New Movement. Devon: Triarchy Press
• Psarras, B. (2018). «Walking the senses, Curating the ears: Towards a hybrid flaneur/flaneuse as ‘orchestrator’» LEA: Leonardo Electronic Almanac, Vol. 22 (3), ‘Sound Curating’. Publisher: The MIT Press, Printed and Online.
• Psarras, B. (2018). “From Stones to GPS: Critical reflections on aesthetic walking and the need to draw a line” InterArtive e-journal, Issue 100: Walking Art / Walking Aesthetics, ISSN 2013-679X (online), pp. 1-8 
• Psarras. B. (2021). "The contemporary city as surface, interface and flow: Textual installations, interactive environments and performances with means of communication through localization". Chap. in Avgitidou, A. (eds.) Public Art, Public Sphere, University Studio Press, pp. 179-208.
• Psarras, B. (2020). "Performing the Poetic and the Technological: Performative Intentions, Expanded (En)Situations and Technological Objects", Chapter in Avgitidou A. (ed.) 10 years of Performance Now, Athens: National Documentation Centre, pp. 51-63.
• Psarras, V. (2024). 'On the spot, On the move: Peripatetic poetry, topo-gestures and technology' In Zafeiropoulos, Th. (eds.) HERE: Interpretive Approaches and Artistic Practices, Athens: Tziolas Publications, pp. 248-271
• Psarras, B. (2024). ‘Drifting poetries, floating gestures: Performing with/upon the sea in contemporary media arts’, Technoetic Arts: A Journal of Speculative Research, Vol. 22 (2), special issue: Into/Across the sea, Intellect, pp. 237-251. printed and online, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1386/tear_00134_1