Performance Symposium 2019

PERFORMANCE: IN ART AND ART EDUCATION

Symposium
2019


March 29-31, 2019
Teachers College, Columbia University
525 West 120th Street
New York, NY 10027

 

Sponsored by the Art and Art Education Program at Teachers College, Columbia University, PERFORMANCE: IN ART AND ART EDUCATION is an academic symposium that will explore the roots, contemporary practices, and teaching of Performance as a multi-disciplinary form of visual art that involves presentation of actions by live human bodies.  
 
With the recent proliferation of Performance works claiming space amid the galleries of art museums worldwide, today’s museum-goers are faced with new, sometimes unfamiliar, sorts of visual-art expression that may be as confounding as they are invigorating.  What exactly is the art of “Performance,” as distinct and different from, yet surely related to, the performing arts we recognize and tag as dance, drama, or music? When, where, and from what did it emerge and, given its increasing popularity within the contemporary art world, how do art educators teach Performance and nurture students’ facility with it as an artistic way of knowing and expressing?
 
With its tri-partite lens, this symposium of scholarly paper presentations panel discussions, keynote speeches, workshops, and performances will examine the subject of Performance by (1) situating it among its historical predecessors, (2) spotlighting its current manifestations, and (3) considering its pedagogical aspects and role within the art education curricula of schools and cultural institutions.  While investigations in the field of Performance Studies have often intersected with other arts and humanities disciplines, this gathering of artists, performers, scholars, and educators will look specifically at Performance work in conjunction with the philosophies and practices of visual art education, be it in PK-12 schools, colleges and universities, museums, or other settings. Emphasis will be on pioneering approaches to incorporating Performance and educational experiences.  
 
The symposium will be held in the Millbank Chapel and the Macy Art Gallery at Teachers College, Columbia University. The Millbank Chapel is located on the first floor of Zankel Hall and the Macy Art Gallery is on the fourth floor of Macy Hall.  
 
Throughout the Symposium weekend, Zankel 406 will be open and available for Symposium participants to use as an informal meeting room.
 
For further information, contact Symposium Coordinator Dr. Lisa Jo Sagolla, at sagolla@tc.columbia.edu or (212) 678-6602.

REGISTER

Non-credit Registration Fees
Friday only: $25
Saturday only: $50
Sunday only: $20
Friday + Saturday: $65
Friday + Sunday $35
Saturday + Sunday: $60
Friday + Saturday + Sunday: $85
 

REGISTER HERE 

SCHEDULE

 

Friday, March 29

Millbank Chapel & Macy Art Gallery
3:45 pm - 8:00 pm

 

Millbank Chapel
3:45 pm - 4:00 pm | REGISTRATION & COFFEE
 
4:00 pm - 4:10 pm | OPENING REMARKS
Lisa Jo Sagolla, Adjunct Associate Professor, Art & Art Education Program, Teachers College, Columbia University
 
4:15 pm - 4:50 pm | KEYNOTE ADDRESS #1: “Expedient Experimentalism: Rethinking Merce Cunningham’s ‘Events’”
Claire Bishop, Professor, Ph.D. Program in Art History, CUNY Graduate Center
 
4:50 pm - 5:00 pm | COFFEE BREAK
 
5:00 pm - 6:35 pm | PANEL #1 - PERFORMANCE: HISTORY, PHILOSOPHY, AND EDUCATION
Panel Moderator: Nicole Johnson, Ed.D. candidate, Teachers College, Columbia University

“A Modern Synthesis: Performance and the Fashion Arts in the 20th and 21st Centuries,” by Steven Faerm, Associate Professor of Fashion, Parsons School of Design

“Talking About the Performance and Talking Around the Performance,” by Christopher Lynn, Associate Professor of Historical, Critical and Cultural Studies in Art and Design, Brigham Young University

“On Reading Collectively: CPR’s Performance Philosophy Reading Group,” by Charlotte Farrell, Director, Center for Performance Research, Brooklyn, New York

“Performing Currere: Scores for Difficult Conversations,” by Catalina Hernandez-Cabal, Ph.D. candidate in Art Education, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 

 
Macy Art Gallery
6:45 pm - 7:15 pm | PERFORMANCE
“Chameleon (The Columbia Installments)”
Direction: Jaamil Olawale Kosoko
Performance: Nile Harris
Sound Design: Everett-Asis Saunders
 
7:15 pm - 8:00 pm | RECEPTION

 

Saturday, March 30

Millbank Chapel & Macy Art Gallery
9:00 am - 6:15 pm

 

Millbank Chapel
9:00 am | REGISTRATION and COFFEE
 
9:15 am - 9:50 am | KEYNOTE ADDRESS #2: "Fruitful Darkness: Performance and the Liminal Moment"
Thomas Albrecht, Performance Artist, Assistant Dean and Associate Professor, SUNY New Paltz
 
9:50 am - 10:00 am | COFFEE BREAK
 
10:00 am - 11:35 am | PANEL #2 - EDUCATIONAL INTERSECTIONS IN CONTEMPORARY PERFORMANCE
Panel Moderator: Iris Bildstein, Lecturer in Art and Art Education, Teachers College, Columbia University

*"Lecture Performing: Activating a Museum Installation through Performance Philosophy and Artistic Research,” by Daniel Peltz, Professor of Fine Art, Rhode Island School of Design, and Ioana B. Jucan, Digital Cultures Research Lab, Leuphana University, Germany

“Joseph’s Sancho: Educating Audiences about Black-Britons, Portraiture, and Enfranchisement through Performance,” by  Diego Villada, Assistant Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies, New College of Florida

“A Case Study of a Performative Storytelling Art Project, La Austral by Artist Pablo Helguera and Dreamers (2017-2018),” by Eunji Lee, Ed.D. candidate, Teachers College, Columbia University

“Dances for a Variable Population and Movement Speaks: Intersectional Site-Specific Public Performance and Older Adults,” by DVP Artistic Director Naomi Goldberg Haas, DVP Teaching Artist Magda Kaczmarska, and DVP Guest Artist Ellen Graff

 
11:35 am - 1:30 pm | LUNCH ON YOUR OWN
 
Macy Art Gallery
1:30 pm to 1:50 pm | PERFORMANCE
“No More Beautiful Dances” (excerpt) by Anabella Lenzu
 
Millbank Chapel
2:00 pm to 3:35 pm | PANEL #3 - TEACHING IN AND THROUGH PERFORMANCE
Panel Moderator: Iris Bildstein, Lecturer in Art and Art Education, Teachers College, Columbia University

“Performance Art: Teaching for Understanding and Creative Dispositions in a Comprehensive High School Visual Art Program” by Jennifer Smith, Visual Arts Teacher, River Hill High School, and Gino Molfino, Coordinator of Fine Arts, Howard County Public School System

“Facilitating a Research-Based Course on ‘Performance Art Behind the Iron Curtain’: Reflections of an Artist-Teacher Towards an Aesthetic and Systemic Approach to Teaching Performance in the Humanities,” by Nastasia Louveau, Ph.D. candidate, University of Zurich

“The Crankie: A Tool for Concretizing the Abstract and the Ephemeral,”  by Felice Amato, Assistant Professor of Art Education, Boston University

“Performing the Visualization of Data to Address Social Justice” by Ayelet Danielle Aldouby, Ed.D. candidate, Teachers College, Columbia University, and Dominique Paul, multi-disciplinary artist                            

 
3:35 pm  - 3:45 pm | COFFEE BREAK 
 
3:45 pm - 4:30 pm | Five Simultaneous Break-out Sessions:
BREAK-OUT SESSION #1 - Location: Millbank Chapel
Sound Pedagogy: Material Inquiry into the Spatiality of Embodied Listening
Chris Moffett, Marta Cabral, Marie-Claire Valdez 
BREAK-OUT SESSION #2 - Location: Horace Mann 512
Engaging Older Adults in Intersectional Site-Related Public Performance
Naomi Goldberg Haas, Magda Kaczmarska, Ellen Graff
BREAK-OUT  SESSION #3 - Location: Macy Art Gallery
A Dance Adventure
Jennie Miller and Dance Adventure
BREAK-OUT SESSION #4 - Location: Macy 445 (Painting Studio)
My Body, My Country: Body Mapping Workshop
Anabella Lenzu
BREAK-OUT SESSION #5 - Location: Zankel 418
Re-wiring Traditional Mindsets for Performance-based Making
Gino Molfino
 
 4:30 pm  - 4:45 pm | COFFEE BREAK
 
 4:45 pm - 5:30 pm | Five Simultaneous Break-out Sessions (as above) Repeated
 
Macy Art Gallery
5:45 pm to 6:15 pm | SYMPOSIUM RESPONSE
Dean Moss, Interdisciplinary Choreographer and Video Artist

 

Sunday, March 31

2:00 pm - 5:00 pm   
Symposium Outing
 
TILTA world premiere presented by Racoco Productions at Abrons Arts Center, 466 Grand Street, NYC.
Tickets are limited.  Symposium participants interested in attending should register by March 24.
 

A live performance/construction site, choreographed by Rachel Cohen with music by Lynn Wright, TILT features tap dancer Heather Cornell, with performances by Toby Billowitz, Remi Harris, Masumi Kishimoto, and Meghan Schardt.  Sets created with Bill Kennedy. Costume design by OLEK. Lighting design by Jon Harper. Lynn Wright, composer, guitar; Eric Eble, double bass; Nikki D’Agostino bass clarinet, bass and alto sax; Eric Hoegemeyer Ableton, percussion.

Starting at 1:45, an interactive pre-show installation will be open in the lobby gallery.  Appropriate for ages 6 and up.

Following the 2:30 pm performance of TILT, Symposium participants will be invited to engage in a special talk-back discussion with the performers.   

TILT is the final chapter of a multi-year project that began with a commission by Women in Motion.  It was created in part through The Field’s Artist Residency program, supported by the Tides Foundation, and residencies at CAVE in Brooklyn and Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore.  

Racoco Productions are fantastic excavations of everyday things.  They combine quixotic choreography, absurdist visuals, and raw materials to create theatrical worlds in which movement, music, humor, emotion,and texture are inextricably linked.  The body and everyday objects are compared, contrasted, blended, and confused to illustrate the inescapable messiness of existence.

  

*Screening throughout the Symposium in Macy Art Gallery C will be a videorecording of "In the ruins of Rejmyre's future," a performative lecture by Daniel Peltz and Ioana Jucan, as presented as an exhibition of Peltz's work at the Norrkoping Konstmuseum, Norrkoping, Sweden, April 2018

BIOGRAPHIES

  • Profile Placeholder Image

    THOMAS ALBRECHT Keynote Speaker

  • Profile Placeholder Image

    AYELET DANIELLE ALDOUBY Presenter

  • Profile Placeholder Image

    FELICE AMATO Presenter

  • Profile Placeholder Image

    IRIS BILDSTEIN Moderator

  • Profile Placeholder Image

    CLAIRE BISHOP Keynote Speaker

  • Profile Placeholder Image

    STEVEN FAERM Presenter

  • Profile Placeholder Image

    CHARLOTTE FARRELL Presenter

  • Profile Placeholder Image

    NAOMI GOLDBERG HAAS Presenter and Break-out Session Leader

  • Profile Placeholder Image

    ELLEN GRAFF Presenter and Break-out Session Leader

  • Profile Placeholder Image

    NILE HARRIS Performer

  • Profile Placeholder Image

    CATALINA HERNANDEZ-CABAL Presenter

  • Profile Placeholder Image

    NICOLE JOHNSON Moderator

  • Profile Placeholder Image

    IOANA B. JUCAN Presenter

  • Profile Placeholder Image

    MAGDA KACZMARSKA Presenter and Break-out Session Leader

  • Profile Placeholder Image

    JAAMIL OLAWALE KOSOKO Performance Director

  • Profile Placeholder Image

    EUNJI LEE Presenter

  • Profile Placeholder Image

    ANABELLA LENZU Performer and Break-out Session Leader

  • Profile Placeholder Image

    NASTASIA LOUVEAU Presenter

  • Profile Placeholder Image

    CHRISTOPHER LYNN Presenter

  • Profile Placeholder Image

    JENNIE MILLER Break-out Session Leader

  • Profile Placeholder Image

    GINO MOLFINO Presenter and Break-out Session Leader

  • Profile Placeholder Image

    DEAN MOSS Symposium Respondent

  • Profile Placeholder Image

    DOMINIQUE PAUL Presenter

  • Profile Placeholder Image

    DANIEL PELTZ Presenter

  • Profile Placeholder Image

    LISA JO SAGOLLA Symposium Coordinator

  • Profile Placeholder Image

    EVERETT-ASIS SAUNDERS Performance Sound Designer

  • Profile Placeholder Image

    JENNIFER SMITH Presenter

  • Profile Placeholder Image

    DIEGO VILLADA Presenter

BREAK-OUT SESSIONS:

Break-out Session #1 - Location: Millbank Chapel
Sound Pedagogy: Material Inquiry into the Spatiality of Embodied Listening
Chris Moffett, Marta Cabral, and Marie-Claire Valdez

The domains of sound, education, and performance have long been codified and coordinated around basic configurations and operations.  This break-out session will involve participants in experimentation around the moving and performative dimensions of listening in relationship to our material environments.  How does sound activate a place or turn an ear? Participants will engage with the found sounds of the Symposium and its larger site, as well as generating sound experiences that tune the listener in to their potential displacements, leakages and reverberations, and blur the line between performance and audience.  

 

Break-out Session #2 - Location: Horace Mann 512
Engaging Older Adults in Intersectional Site-Related Public Performance
Naomi Goldberg Haas, Magda Kaczmarska, and Ellen Graff

Founded in 2005 by artistic director Naomi Goldberg Haas, Dances for a Variable Population (DVP) is a multigenerational company with members and guest artists aged 20s to 90s, that engages community members as participants and audiences.  Serving predominantly low income, minority and culturally underserved populations, DVP works with older adults and their communities to create site-related performance works in places of mass-transportation, public parks and iconic NYC spaces.  Since its founding, DVP has presented site-specific performances at 11 iconic NYC spaces, notably the High Line, Times Square, NY Botanical Garden, and Whitehall Terminal for the Staten Island Ferry. DVP’s work focuses on a radical expansion of the definition of who is a dancer, who can make dance, and where and how dance can be experienced.  DVP’s approach utilizes the strengths and limitations/challenges of the individuals comprising each group to create work celebrating and highlighting the communities which define them. Embodying community history, older adults inspire and create the material for the choreography to be presented in the site-related work. At this break-out session, DVP artistic director Naomi Goldberg Haas, M.F.A., iconic dance educator and professor Ellen Graff, Ph.D., and DVP lead teacher and community and program manager Magda Kaczmarska, M.F.A., will lead the participants in some of the approaches utilized by the company in working with older adult and intergenerational populations in creating site-specific performance.  Participants will create and perform a dance utilizing methodologies of DVP company members and teaching artists. Beginning with a large group discussion of finding “common ground,” we will then work in small groups to target individual markers of identity as well as recognize our strengths and challenges. Following dialogue, guided decision making and group agreement, each group will create a dance highlighting the “common ground” of their participants. Participants are asked to come in clothing and shoes in which they feel comfortable moving. All abilities and ages are welcome.

 

Break-out Session #3 - Location: Macy Art Gallery
A Dance Adventure
Jennie Miller and Dance Adventure

This break-out session will consist of the children’s dance company Dance Adventure creating a site-specific work, performing it, and then having a dialogue with participants about their views on Performance.  The dancers, ages 9-15, will choreograph a piece during the session. The participants will be able to talk with the young dancers about their own choreographic process as they create, as well as have a post-performance discussion.  The dancers of Dance Adventure have created and performed site work all over New York City, at PS 1, Brookfield Arts, and the Whitney, as well as at Jacob’s Pillow. They have worked with the artists Olek, Paula Hayes, Melissa Riker of the Kinesis Project, and the New York Performing Arts Library and NYU Steinhardt.

 

Break-out Session #4 - Location: Macy 445 (Painting Studio)
My Body, My Country: Body Mapping Workshop
Anabella Lenzu

This break-out session is for art teachers looking for ways to incorporate Performance work into their teaching and/or use the body as a medium of visual art expression and to open up one’s creativity.  How does our body become our homeland? How do our bodies become a receptacle and messenger of the multiple realities we are immersed in? Participants will be challenged to think about how they view bodies, using texts and drawings to share their own story of their bodies.  The aim is to explore issues of identity and agency informed by the experiences of a contemporary artist who is also a woman, mother and immigrant in the United States. Body mapping is the process of creating body maps using drawings, paintings and other techniques to visually represent aspects of people’s lives, their bodies and the world they live in.  

 

Break-out Session #5 - Location: Zankel 418
Rewiring Traditional Mindsets for Performance-Based Making
Gino Molfino

This hands-on break-out session will introduce participants to ideation and making strategies that foster community and help rewire traditional student mindsets necessary for understanding performance-based art making.  Practices highlighted will demonstrate how students can be guided towards successful making experiences using methods that embed personal meaning along with formal/technical qualities to communicate ideas and concepts that traditional media may not allow.  Performance-based elements will be utilized to compose artworks and foster universal visual literacy/meaning. Student and master performance-based exemplars, resources, and documentation will be shared to demonstrate how a scaffold curriculum can empower students to understand the relevance of inquiry, process, collaboration, perseverance and communication in today’s classroom.  

 

CONTACT

For further information, contact Symposium Coordinator Dr. Lisa Jo Sagolla, at sagolla@tc.columbia.edu or (212) 678-6602.

 

Back to skip to quick links