Marilyn Arsem
COURSE SIZE: 12 Participants
In this workshop we will create performance actions as a direct response to particular environments or social contexts that are encountered. We will work outside the Tramway in different locations throughout the city.
Participants will examine how aspects of a site can be used to generate performances that are unique to that location. We will design performances that respond to the history of a site, and to a site’s social uses. We will work with materials that are found at a location, and consider how the architecture or design of a space influences the way bodies move through it. We will also incorporate into the work whatever weather conditions we encounter, so participants should be prepared with suitable attire!
We will experiment with interactive events, interventions, secret performances, and actions that are created for an informed viewer. We will consider how art might infiltrate daily life, and how performance functions with a public who are not intending to encounter art, taking into account the legal and ethical issues of creating unexpected actions in public.
We will examine questions of documentation, finding ways to record the actions without adversely impacting the experience of the audience. We will experiment with different methods, including documentation that is built into the action, recording audience interviews, preserving relics of the action, generating artist process notes, as well as the more familiar use of photographs and video.
Responding to a specific context requires that you pay attention to your experience of the place. But perhaps the more important task is paying attention to what it is that you are noticing. You will more fully understand your own practice by learning to recognize what compels you, which in turn will allow you to develop your work more deeply.
Marilyn Arsem has been creating live events since 1975, from solo gallery performances to large-scale, site-specific works. Arsem has presented work at festivals, conferences, alternative spaces, galleries, museums and universities in North and South America, Europe and Asia. Most recently she has focused on creating site-specific performances, often in the context of festivals. These works are not planned in advance, but made in response to a location that is selected on arrival.
She is a member (and founder) of Mobius, Inc., A Boston-based collaborative of interdisciplinary artists. As a full-time faculty member at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, she heads the Performance Area and is a Graduate Advisor.
Photographic Credit: Sofia De Grenade