Location: KODE – Art Museums of Bergen
Level: Open for both BA and MA level
Number of available places for KUNO students: 5
Responsible teacher: Mary Coble, Fine Art Senior Lecturer, Valand Academy
Period: 04. 09.09.
About the schedule: Monday 4th- Thursday 7th: Workshop from 9-16:00 with optional and occasional evening gatherings. Saturday 9th: Workshop from 11:00-17:00. This includes participants from the workshop presenting a live performance to take place from 13:00-14:30 at KODE – Art Museums of Bergen
As part of Voices (or Stemmer in Norwegian) KODE – Art Museums of Bergen have organized a weekend of performances. There will be live works throughout September 8th, 9th and 10th that workshop participants will be encouraged to attend although this is not mandatory.
Application deadline: August 4th by noon.
How to apply: Apply with a short motivation statement of 500 words or less as to why you would like to participate in the workshop and about your practice plus no more than 5 images (or a website link) of your own work to Mary Coble at mary.coble@akademinvaland.gu.se
Please put KUNO Workshop in the subject line.
Responsible teacher: Mary Coble, Fine Art Senior Lecturer, Valand Academy
About the schedule: Saturday 9th: Workshop from 11:00-17:00. This includes participants from the workshop presenting a live performance to take place from 13:00-14:30 at KODE – Art Museums of Bergen
As part of Voices (or Stemmer in Norwegian) KODE – Art Museums of Bergen have organized a weekend of performances. There will be live works throughout September 8th, 9th and 10th that workshop participants will be encouraged to attend although this is not mandatory.
Description:
This workshop is initiated by Mary Coble upon the invitation by KODE-Art Museums of Bergan to participate in Voices that will be held at KODE on September 8th, 9th and 10th. Numerous artists have been commissioned to develop and perform live works that respond to the current state of political elections- which is expanded upon in their curatorial statement*. The Norwegian government elections are on the following Monday September 11.
The workshop will be five days in totally and will include a live performance on the final day that will be included in the Voices performance program
The workshop will include three main elements:
1. Thematic discussions, seminars, presentations
2. Performance preparation
3. Live performance
1.Thematic discussions
Coble’s artistic research project for a number of years has resulted in multiple performances that explore the relationship between queer performance and activism including gestures of defiance such as the raised fist or protests where groups of people link arms and assemble together or times where single bodies defy structures of power. Humorous acts of glitter bombing and pieing as more non-traditional forms of resistance are also included in this research.
This workshop will incorporate Coble’s current artistic research as well as that of other invited performance artists, researchers and thinker such as Frans Jacobi, Professor Timebased Art / Performance, Institute of Art Faculty of art, music & design, University of Bergen and a member of the Voices organizing group.
Discussions of the importance of bodies gathering in protests would be informed by selected readings of for example Judith Butler’s Notes Towards a Performative Theory of Assembly. The workshop will also include a look at the recent Presidential elections in the United States and the Trump administration’s rhetoric in relationship to the Scandinavian and European political climate.
The workshop will work around the political concepts that could be distilled specifically through the children’s schoolyard game Red Rover** –which the live performance will be based on-such as contemporary urgencies of boundaries, barriers, fences and border control as well as the lines between play and violence and social control.
2. Performance preparation
Based on the discussions described above the workshop will serve to prepare the participants for a live performance based loosely on the game Red Rover.
The participants will work to learn a set of choreographed moves-that Coble will have created in advance of the workshop- but that then will be combined, modified or further developed together as a group. The workshop participants will work collaboratively to create a set of strategies that will give allow for control during the performance of the Red Rover game but would also allow for chance and spontaneity.
3. The live performance
The live performance is scheduled for Saturday 9th from 13:00-14:30 at KODE – Art Museums of Bergen.
The proposition of the performance has its foundation in the common schoolyard game Red Rover. The workshop group will be performing according to a set of prepared, choreographed moves, which point to the game’s basic but complex elements of assembly, battle, election and strategy. The workshop will prepare the group conceptually, mentally and physically for this performance.
This workshop and performance will be physically demanding. However people of all abilities and fitness levels are encouraged to attend. The workshop will be formulated to accommodate any need. If there are any questions or concerns about this in advance, please feel free to email Mary Coble at mary.coble@akademinvaland.gu.se
This workshop will be in English.
This workshop will be lead by Mary Coble, artist and Senior Lecturer at Valand Academy with additional supporting guests. Embracing unpredictability, messiness and failure Coble has worked with performance art for over 17 years, through this time aiming to manifest problems of bodily, societal and symbolic navigation particularly focusing on issues of injustice and normative boundaries. Recurrent themes in Coble’s work revolve around queer politics and poetics often working site-specifically, research-based and – from time to time collectively/participatory. Engagement in artistic practices and interventions within and outside of established institutions and the use of activist strategies are integral to Coble’s work.
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*The following is the curatorial statement from the KODE-Art Museums of Bergan Voices organizing group:
“In connection with the Norwegian government elections on September 11 this year, KODE – Art Museums of Bergen, has invited a group of performance artists. They have been asked to comment on the impact of free elections and election results for the individual and society as a whole. The artists are free to express political standpoints and opinions on ethical issues.
During the last couple of years, elections and election results in the western world have received increased attention. There is an increase in political polarization in the public discourse and a combat on who is projecting truthful, objective information. Fundamental political alliances are changing. What values are at stake? What does the individuals opinion, engagement, and democratic involvement, mean in 2017?”
**Red Rover played in the United States and elsewhere under various names such as Forcing the City Gates Octopus Tag and Send, O King, A Soldier.
There are two teams (team A and team B). The members of team A line up side by side-holding hands or linking arms. They stand opposite of and facing team B who is in the same configuration and is 15-20 meters away.
Team A elects a player from team B and together they yell ‘red rover, red rover send Mary (or someone’s name from the other team) right over’. This person then has to leave team B, running or moving towards team A trying to break through their linked arms and clasped hands. If this person successfully bursts through then they get to take one of the members of team A back with them to team B. If this person is stopped from breaking through then this person must join team A-adding to their team size.
This routine continues until one team completely consumes the opposing team leaving a single mass of ‘the winning team’ verses two opposing sides. To note- Red Rover has been banned in many US schools today because of the violence and bullying that some think it promotes; others support the game citing the teamwork and strategic thinking that’s needed.
Objectives:
Examine the relationship between politics and contemporary art; current political elections; past and present strategies of protests.
Identify artistic approaches in Performance Art that aim to work through modes of activism.
Identify non traditional/normative protest strategies and how they may be learned from and expanded upon.
Collaborate on and perform in a live work as part of Voices- KODE -Art Museums of Bergen performance weekend
Reflect on and describe the process of the live performance
Assessment: Full commitment to attendance and participation. An evaluation of the workshop will be done together orally and in written form post workshop.
