Discourse

The festival format offers a particular structure in which to view, participate with, and make sense of performance. While parts of this structure are owed to duration and scheduling considerations, the other participating artists and their works offer a more abstract framework with which to think. This iteration of discourse will provide a unique opportunity for participatory research and feedback, where artists will speak to their place in the festival on conceptual and thematic registers. To what extent do the limitations of the festival affect the works? Does order and timing function as an ambiguous critique of adjacent work? How does the content of the festival and the work therein affect artistic practice and the trajectory of future work? Artists are invited to discuss these questions with regard to their participation in festivals, including the current fourth annual RAPID PULSE.

This panel considers performance an instance of activism that generates forums for engaging with social, political and cultural concerns. Performance activism may be thought of as a perspective that resonates with memories of locations and events, and a method for transforming the political landscape. This discussion will consider the techniques and processes artists employ to empower local and global communities and inspire them to informed action. Themes such as re-enactment, repetition, and site-specificity will be discussed as practices for addressing or restructuring social and political contexts.

This panel considers performance art as a strategy for interrogating assumptions about and the realities of bodies marked by gender and sex. There exists a multiplicity of genders, at once performed by unique bodies and inflected with the particularities of their historical and cultural contexts. Gender identity is a symbolic representation that seeks to differentiate, all the while intersecting with other signifiers such as class, ethnicity, religion, and so on. The invited artists will be asked to speak to the decidedly gendered and/or sexed aspects of their work and investigate the manner in which performance art foregrounds and contests popular notions of gendered and sexed bodies, from their relationships and experiences to their material culture and labor.

Bathing has a vast historical importance as well as many fascinating and humorous anecdotes. Through bathing, discussions of taboo, cleanliness, culture and the body will be addressed with humor and create a discussion around current topics in performance such as nudity, ritual and the everyday. Mitsu Salmon will give a lecture on the cultural and historical significance of bathing followed by performance vignettes, satire and academic lectures.