Author: jmc3

April 16th – Performance Art at Yale, a session of the PSWG at the Yale School of Art

by jmc3

The PSWG’s penultimate session of the academic year will be hosted in the Yale School of Art and bring together scholars of performance with practitioners of performance art.

MFA Kenya Robinson will perform live.

MFA graduate and performance artist Tamar Ettun and Lecturer in Theatre Studies, Emily Coates will be in conversation.

Scholars and artists from all disciplinary backgrounds are invited to meet together and contribute to the formation of a shared dialogue on performance art at Yale. We hope it will be the first of many such conversations.

Lunch will be served.

29th January – Joey Plaster: Vanguard Revisited: Co-Performing Queer Histories in San Francisco’s Tenderloin

by jmc3

The PSWG blog this week presents a curated series of responses to Joey Plaster’s paper ‘Vanguard Revisited: Co-Performing Queer Histories in San Francisco’s Tenderloin’. Joey has selected for us an iconic object of performance around which his fieldwork has crystallized and which uniquely expresses the performance genealogy his work traces. By ‘objects of performance’ we mean things which embody, depict, surrogate, reflect, describe or resonate with a performance in the past and which constitute the focus of our critical attention. They could be films, audio recordings, clothes, anecdotes, buildings, gestures and so on- in short, objects by which we know the presence- or disappearance- of a performance.

You are welcome to extend the conversation.

22nd January 2013 – Carolee Klimchock, Humor Hung Like a Horse: Coachmen and Coaches as Satirical Sites for Discussions of Class and Power in the Gilded Age

by jmc3

The PSWG blog this week presents a curated series of responses to Carolee Klimchock’s paper ‘Humor Hung Like a Horse: Coachmen and Coaches as Satirical Sites for Discussions of Class and Power in the Gilded Age’. Carolee has selected for us a group of objects of performance around which her research is crystallizing. By ‘objects of performance’ we mean things which embody, depict, surrogate, reflect, describe or resonate with a performance in the past and which constitute the focus of our critical attention. They could be films, audio recordings, clothes, anecdotes, buildings, gestures and so on- in short, objects by which we know the presence- or disappearance- of a performance. In this case Carolee has chosen a set of photographs and anecdotes.

You are welcome to extend the conversation.

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“An Ill Matched Coachman”

“A Philadelphia lady is in deep distress concerning her coachman. She returned from a drive in very dejected spirits the other day and explained the cause to a friend by saying:–“I sent clear to South Carolina to get a man to match my brougham. He was a real olive green, and I was delighted all summer. Why, you don’t know how many congratulations I received on my taste at the City Troop races! But now the cold weather comes he turns that nasty grey. The wretch, I believe he knew he would.”—

(New York Herald, 1885)

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“In selecting his coachman, a man should be as careful as in the purchase of a horse…If he is young and good-looking he will elope with his employer’s daughter.”

Chicago Daily Tribune, 1900.

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“Matrimony is becoming a more stable institution, judging from the numerous coachmen elopements.”

The World, 1888

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PSWG October 2nd Elizabeth Wiet — Jack Smith, Charles Ludlam, and the Objects of Camp

by jmc3

This week the PSWG blog takes the form of a curated set of responses to Elizabeth Wiet’s paper ‘Jack Smith, Charles Ludlam, and the Objects of Camp’ delivered and discussed October 2nd. We asked Elizabeth to select two key objects of performance to stimulate critical response from fellow PSWG scholars. By ‘objects of performance’ we mean things which embody, depict, surrogate, reflect, describe or resonate with a performance in the past and which constitute the focus of our critical attention. They could be films, audio recordings, clothes, anecdotes, buildings, gestures and so on- in short, objects by which we know the presence- or disappearance- of a performance.

Elizabeth chose an anecdote and a film. Here they are, with exhibition label-type responses from Elise Morrison (Performance Studies), Lina Moe (English) and John Cooper (Art History).

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“The more people have told me that I had to get away from the word “camp,” that it’s terrible that people would call my work “camp,” the more I decided to embrace it. If nobody wants it, come to me! Bring me your poor, your tired, your yearning to be free! Let my theatre be the repository of all forbidden theatrical conventions!”

Charles Ludlam
anecdote quoted in Ridiculous Theatre: Scourge of Human Folly, the Essays and Opinions of Charles Ludlam, ed. Steven Samuels (New York, 1992) p. 227

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John Cooper – 18th September – Art / Performance / History

by jmc3
'Spanish Dance. (El Jaleo de Cadix.)'
‘Spanish Dance. (El Jaleo de Cadix.)’ (mid 19th C, New York) hand-coloured lithograph, N. Currier (publisher) Victoria and Albert Museum

John Cooper, a phd candidate in the Art History department, co-convenor of the PSWG and Graduate Research Assistant at the Yale Center for British Art, will workshop a part of his dissertation Imperial Balls: the Arts of Sex, War and Dancing in India, England and the Caribbean, 1800-1850.

This session will present a body of colonial images drawn from India, England and the Caribbean which show dancers dancing from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.  These medium-sized graphic works on paper broadly represent: nautch dancing in India, ballet in England and social dancing in the Caribbean. Being the remains of both art works and performances, what particular status do they have in the history of art and empire? How might the disciplines of Art History and Performance Studies collaborate to produce readings of such interdisciplinary documents?

The starting point for addressing an answer to these questions will be the practice of ‘adornment’ which lies nested and as yet unclaimed in the etymology of the word ‘performance’. Close visual analysis of key images in the history of art, dance and empire will investigate how context adorns the dancing figure with the complexity and contradictions of colonial history.