SMFA Boston - Performance

Performance courses at the Museum School help you develop your own voice in creating live, time-based art. Our focus is on solo work based in the visual, but we also encourage you to engage in an interdisciplinary practice incorporating other media.

Courses familiarize you with a range of approaches to developing original performance work, improve your technical production skills, and introduce you to the theories and history of performance. We encourage you to experiment with different performance techniques and performance structures, and to examine the relationship between audience and artist.

Each year we host visits from internationally known performance artists who perform, give artist talks, and teach intensive workshops.

Previous Course Offerings
Below are previous course offerings for the Performance area. Students must visit mySMFA to see current offerings and register.

Students in the undergraduate, graduate, Studio, and Post-Baccalaureate certificate programs may also take Continuing Education courses for credit.

Beginning Performance Workshop / PER 1010

Students with little or no experience in performance art examine the basics of performance art: use of time and space, the performer's relationship to the audience, and the process of developing original material for performance. Class exercises help us explore the use of autobiographical material, dreams, text, and personas, as well as visual and sound elements. We present a public showing of work in progress at the end of the semester.

Sourcing Through Movement and Voice / PER 2007

Our bodies hold a wealth of material that begs to be sourced and used in our creative and artistic lives. This process-oriented class focuses on accessing this deep material. Using forms such as authentic movement, release techniques, and Roy Hart Theatre vocal exercises, students learn to trust and experience their bodies, and begin the process of integrating their physical selves with their artistic work. All participants must be committed to working in a group and attending all classes. Previous performance experience required. Admission by consent of instructor.

Durational Performances / PER 2013 01

What happens when a performance extends over time, beyond the theatrical convention of an evening's entertainment, into hours or days or even weeks? What is its effect on the artist? What is the impact on the audience? Often these performances result in real, physical change - to the artist, the environment and even the viewer. What are the ethical issues in this kind of work? What kinds of inquiry are best suited to this process? And how can the work be documented? Students will create and document their own durational performances. Each week we will also consider the work of a different artist who uses duration, by reading articles and viewing documentation. Previous performance experience required.

Prerequisite: 2 performance classes

Risk Management / PER 2018

International Performance Presentations / PER 2019

Site-Specific Performance / PER 2020 01

This course will take place in different locations within and beyond the school. Students will examine how aspects of a site can be used to generate performances that are unique to that location. We will consider the history of the site, work with materials found at the site, and explore how the physical layout influences the way both audience and artist bodies move through the space. Students will be expected to complete a class exercises in response to each site, as well as create a final performance at a location of their own choosing. Signature is required.

Dada and Performance Art / PER 2021

DADA and Performance Art will explore the connections between contemporary art practice and Dada (circa 1900-1925). Themes include; art production in wartime, the artist's relationship to emerging technology and the deconstruction of traditional social roles. Readings, research and studio practice cover collage, found objects and performance art in Dada.

Some learning goals include, an historical and theoretical understanding of the Dada movement (circa 1900-1925), a knowledge of the artists associated with Dada, an understanding of how engendered roles are manifested in art production from Dada to the present and making and seeing the connections between Dada and her/his own art practice.

Arresting Performance: Photography and the Moving Image / PER 2022

In this course, we will consider the myriad ways in which the practice of performance can be bracketed with photography and video, respectively. In order to elucidate our topic, there will be video and film screenings, slide lectures, in-class writing, and readings in art history, theory and criticism. We will critically and theoretically analyze the practice of performance in early video art, Conceptual art, feminist art, photography, and more recent contemporary art, in order to think about ways to extend and expand your own practice as an artist working in performance. As a special feature to this course, students will attend a weekend field trip to New York City to visit art galleries and museums and artists in their studios.

In the Spirit of Dada / PER 2025 01

Dada, from its birth in 1916 at the Cabaret Voltaire, Zurich, Switzerland, has protested, perfomed, printed, and produced work contrary to political, cultural, and artistic standards and expectations. The originators of the ready-made, and founders of Surrealism belonged to Dada. Being a movement primarily intersted in challengin the status quo, creating work that was actively engaging was key. Dad was greatly influential to FLUXUS and the history of perfomance art as it is known today.

This class will examine motives, strategies and attitudes of the Dada movement with discussion and exercises focusing on current relevance and application of key concepts. Topics inlude, but are not exclusive to: social and political response; art vs. anti-art attitudes, materials, venues and methods of distribution; nonsense/absurdism, and defamiliarization; and the uses of text, language, sound, collage, fragmentation, and appopriated materials. Students will be expected to complete weekly exercises and readings to be presented and discussed in class. There will also be a final project with the potential for a group presentation. This course focuses on perfomance and the performative aspects of Dada in a broader sense and is open to all media.

Prerequisites: two performance classes

The Self Examination Room / PER 2026 01

Utilising autobiography and self reflection as primary source material, this class will entail an investigation into the transitory nature of the self.

This class will examine how an idea of self can be constructed, invented, restructured, projected, made discernible and apparent and interrogate questioningly how this self can be perceived and understood both by self and the other. It will also consider the necessary reliance on and inclusion of defining information as provided by the social, the cultural, and the political as we explore the necessity for understanding the context of location to create and comprehend one's self.

It will be expectant and reliant upon the ongoing establishment of highly reflexive and expositive situations that are realised through the ongoing presentation of performances. These works in progress will shift and mutate through development over the course of the investigation. This will allow for an intensive and ongoing examination and the potential transcendence, blurring, extension and removal of the boundaries between private and public, fact and fiction, reality and imagination, comfort and confrontation.

Group critiques and responses will form a crucial aspect of this class. Each week we will also consider the work of artists whose work incorporates self examination, by reading articles and viewing documentation.

prerequisites: 2 performance classes

Moving an Audience / PER 2051

This class examines the kinds of performance and installation art in which the viewer moves through the work engaging in a series of interactions or observations that generate a transformative experience. We will focus on work that operates in extended time and space. We will consider both the conceptualization of the work and the practical aspects of designing the audience interface. We will explore different strategies for bringing an audience into the work and experiment with providing the appropriate amount of information that allows them to fully engage in the piece. Students will be expected to develop and present final projects which may be collaborative. Previous experience in performance is required. Admission is by consent of the instructor.

Contemporary Performance Theory and Practice of Art / PER 3010

Read recent writings of performance studies' theoreticians, including Peggy Phelan, Jon McKenzie, Marvin Carlson, Shannon Jackson, and Dwight Conquorgood. We examine ideas and terminology that have been developed to describe activities that are cross-disciplinary, both inside and beyond the art world. We apply those methods of analyses to the work generated by students, be it performance, installation, Web-based events, or painting. This approach considers the work to be inclusive of the site of production and the site of presentation, the act of making and the act of consumption, and the histories that determine the present moment of perception. For advanced students in all media. Admission by consent of the instructor. Class size is limited.

Performance Projects / PER 3011

Students with experience, who have a particular project in mind that incorporates live performance, show their work every other week in its various stages of development. You polish the technical aspects of your pieces, and refine performance techniques. We pay particular attention to examining the audience's experience of the work, and whether it fulfills the artist's intent. The class includes consultation sessions with the instructor. You produce public presentations of your work at the end of the semester and are responsible for all aspects of production. You must have a specific project in mind, and must submit a written description of your project, as well as an outline of a work plan, in order to be considered for admission. Previous performance experience required. Signature required.

John Cage / PER 4002 01

John Cage was a leading experimental composer who died in 1992. He used randomness, indeterminate processes, silence and the foregoing of personal taste to make music and other media, including performance, writing and visual arts. Cage referred to his work as "purposeless play...an affirmation of life-not an attempt to bring order out of chaos, nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply to wake up to the very life we are living, which is so excellent once one gets one's mind and desires out the way and lets it act of its own accord." This course will combine a study of Cage's writings and works with applications of his ideas and techniques to many different media, visual and time-based. Painters, printmakers, sculptors, film, video, sound and performance students should be able to find ways to use these methods. The course will look at and analyze works by Cage and by his precursors and contemporaries, including Mozart, Jean Arp, Marcel Duchamp and William S. Burroughs, and examine some of Cage's philosphical foundations, such as Zen Buddhism, the I Ching and the writings of Henry David Thoreau. There will be exercises based on Cage's methods, and students will develop a personal project in any medium. Students can also become involved in a major performance of Cage's Variations VII, currently being developed at Mobius.

Open Studios / PER 4025

Open Studios is designed for students who are currently enrolled in another performance class. Each semesters class is built upon the needs and interests of the students, and is a platform from which we can develop and push our ideas. We focus on the practical matters of performing, offer technical support, and most importantly, provide "eyes" for the artist during the development of their work. Two public performance events each semester will allow us to show our works in progress to a larger audience. Preference will be given to students at the beginning and intermediate levels. Both class periods are required. Consent is by the instructor.

Open Studios / PER 4026

Open Studios is an opportunity for students to develop the skills they have learned in other performance classes. Students will develop their own work, critique each other, assist each other with bigger projects, and work toward a public presentation of their work. We will focus on general performance practices including exercises dealing with specific topics, as well as coaching, and feedback on current work. Occasional workshops on specific topics will be given by visiting artists and graduate students working in performance. Periodically we will take field trips to attend performances or performance-related events. We will also schedule individual consultations as needed. Open Studios is designed for students already enrolled in another performance class. Preference will be given to students at the continuing, beginning, and intermediate levels. Prerequisite: Enrollment or completion of PER 1010.

Independent Performance / PER 4098

Students may opt to register for an independent studio period which represents work done outside of class during the academic year. Independent Studio periods should be linked to a course for which you are registered. Students may enroll in up to one block of independent studio per term, and must be registered as a full time studio student. A faculty signature is not required in order to register for the course. If you take more than one independent studio, it must be linked directly to a course and a signature is then required.