Description

This module examines the socio-political and philosophical underpinnings of performance works that utilize transgression as a mode of challenging normative and subjugating perceptions around the body and subjectivity. These performative acts of transgression are contextualized as methodologies to expose and provoke the dominant ideologies that have cultured and shaped contemporary bodies excluding otherness and creating hierarchical societal rules of subjugation. Artists whose work will be extensively discussed and analysed will be inter alia Ron Athey, Franko B, Dominic Johnson, Kira O’Reilly, Ivo Dimchev, Julie Tolentino, Orlan, Fakir Mushafar, John Waters, Vanessa Beecroft, Paul McCarthy a.o. This module is an investigation of the performance of subjectivity and violent acts against the latter in order to comprehend the scripting qualities of Modern ideology and the way individuals perform aspects of their everyday social life. Concerning the content, the module aspires to shed some light and provide a new perspective on marginal performances in order to contextualize and explain them as an expression of contemporary society rather than pathological père-versions, and to cast out the fear of otherness. Furthermore, it intends to not only bring a criticism on the way that contemporary societal structures function and exercise their power through performativity, but to offer possible solutions for emancipation and democratization.
By attending to transgression, otherness and abjection, particularly in their affective function with the audience, social perception and creative performance, this module aims to bridge the different views (psychoanalytical, philosophical, sociological etc) and to extend new understandings of body politics and performance theory. By pursuing those diverse trajectories of thought about the recurrence of those particular conditions that have formed our perception of Otherness, this research aims to create comparative gestures in relation to the performance and constitution of subjectivity.

Module Leader:
Pavlos Kountouriotis

Guest Artists:
Ron Athey (2013)
Nando Messias (2013)
Lauren Barri Hollstein (2014)