Course Description and Objectives:
When we acknowledge overlooked spatial histories of place through site-specifc artworks and practices, only then can we speculate on more inclusive, culturally rich and sustainable future spaces and places. In this studio-based course we will explore site-specific performance making as a critical spatial practice and engagement with place and its spatial politics, histories, presents, and possible futures. Site-specific performances function beyond a conjuring of theatricality – it is an art form and practice that reveals. Our site and key interlocutor in this course is the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) and, more specifically, all that its history and archives might inspire. Themes of memory and palimpsests, haunting, spectres and ghosts, will guide our engagement with the CCA, and how we might approach making site-specific performance works as an orientation towards atmospheres of place.
In this course students are required to engage in research-creation activities towards conceptualizing and realizing a site-specific public performance outcome, that may take a variety of formats including theatrical interventions, site-writing, performative, material, and multimedia installations. Outcomes might also manifest in solo or collaborative performance art works.
We will focus on methods for creating site-specific artworks and for building relationships to place, time, audience, and other media. As such, students will be encouraged to engage with the CCA archives, as a method of research for taking into account the geography, locality, topography, and history of the Canadian Centre for Architecture throughout the process of conceptualizing and realizing their projects.
