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Roles and Rituals: Performativity in Contemporary Arts and Society
Offered By Ash Moniz On Thursday mornings from 10:00 am to 1:00 pm and evenings from 5:30 pm to 8:30 pm |
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This 10 week course investigates the ways in which humans perform (both voluntarily
and involuntarily) in daily life, in legal settings, and cultural contexts. Through analysing
contemporary art practices, performance studies theories, and political/legal scenarios,
we will investigate the norms, traditions, and power structures around different actions/
gestures. Starting off with an introduction to the general ideas, the course will gradually
move towards the question of what performativity means now, in the context of constant
surveillance, consumption, virtual citizenships, and algorithmic control. Towards the end
of the course, we will aim to actively self-reflect on the the roles and positions of the
classroom setting, by participating in collaborative performative experiments (role-play,
workshops, performative games, and learning experiments.
Performance studies is an interdisciplinary field that studies performance and uses
performance as a lens to study the world, drawing from theories of the performing arts,
anthropology and sociology, literary theory, and legal studies.
Tentative Flow for 10 Weeks
• Week 1)Intro to Performativity
• Definitions, names, and general ideas
• Performativity as a theory
• Performance as Visual Arts practice
• Theatre, Intervention, Video Performance, Lecture Performance,
• Conversation about the curriculum
• Going over what to expect
• Intorucing the learning experiments at the end of the course
• Richard Schechner
• https://www.ukessays.com/services/example-essays/drama/richard-
schechners-performance-theory.php
• Video Samples of Contemporary Performance Art
• Bas Jan Ader, Marina Abramovic, Coco Fusco Zhang Huan, Francis Alys, Li
Ming, Sophie Calle, Adel Abdelssamad, Rabih Mroue
• Week 2) Agency and Roles / Gender and Sexuality
• Judith Butler
• “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology
and Feminist Theory”.
• “Performativity, Precarity, and Sexual Politics”
• Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
• The theory of the “homosocial”
• Contemporary Arts
• Drag Performance Artists
• Valet Export
• Heather Cassils “Becoming an Image”
• Catherine Chun Dong “Temporary Husband”
• Week 3) Labour and Consumption / Public Intervention
• Labour
• Gabriele Klein and Bojana Kunst
• “Labour and Performance”
• Theching Hsieh
• “Punching the Time Clock for One Year”
• “Work, Work, Work: A Reader on Art and Labour” Sternberg Press
• Consumption
• Adam Curtis
• Century of the Self
• Performativity of supply/demans
• Public Intervention as Art Performance
• Contemporary Arts
• Yes Men “BBC Report” and “WTO Resignation”
• Amal Kenawy “Silence of the Sheep”
• Lin Yilin “Safely Manouvring Across Lin He Road”
• Rebecca Belmore
• Week 4) Temporality of the Event: From Conference to Olympics
• Peggy Phalen”
• The Ontology of Performance, Representation without Reproduction”
• Claire Doherty
• Advertising/Preparing for a Future performative Moment
• Amelia Jones
• “Presence in Absentia: Experiencing Performance as Documentation”
• Artists
• Lee Walton, Situationist Happenings
• Guy Dubord
• Society of the Spectacle
• Week 5) Archetypes and Rituals
• Archetypes of Performativity
• Carl Jung psychology of Archetypes
• Amanda Beech “Covenant Transport: Move or Die”
• Typecasts, Tropes, and Sterotypes
• When Site Lost the Plot
• Ilona Gaynor “Under Black Carpets”
• Harun Farocki “The Interview”
• Watch and Analyze Video
• Group Discussion
• (Possible Studio Visit to Talk to Mohamed Abdelkarim, a local lecture-
performance artist.
• Week 6) Speech Acts and Spoken Word
• Speech Acts.
• those verbal assurances and promises which seem not only to refer to a
speaking relationship, but to constitute a moral bond between speakers,
• Performative Utterance
• Sentences which are not only describing a given reality, but also changing
the social reality they are describing.
• Illocutionary Acts and Gestures
• illocution is what was meant, and perlocution is what happened as a result.
• JL Austin
• Case Studies
• Zeleny, Jeff. “Obama and Roberts Try the Presidential Oath of Office Again.”
• http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/us/politics/22oath.html
• Week 7) Performing Bureaucracy, and Surveillance
• Maurizio Ferraris
• “Documentality”
• Rune Gade
• “Performing Archives / Archives of Performance”
• Legal Performance
• Declaration of Oath
• Witness, Testimony, Evidence and Judgement
• Rana Hamadeh
• What if justice is the degree to which one can access theatre?
• What constitutes a public audience in age of surveillance?
• Group Discussion
• Corina Lacatus
• “Soverignty as Performenace and Video Art”
• Janez Jansa, Janez Jansa, Janez Jansa
• Legally changing name as art performance
• http://www.mgml.si/en/tobacna-001-cultural-centre/exhibitions/archive-
exhibitions/janez-jansa-janez-jansa-janez-jansa-all-about-you/
• https://vimeo.com/46937250
• Performance Artworks Using Surveillance Technologies
• Wafaa Bilal “3rdi” 2010-11
• Hito Steyerl
• Trevor Paglan
• Week 8) Role-Play, Gaming, and Algorithms
• Study of Live-Action-Role-Plays
• Reading and Discussing Examples
• Maria Backe
• “Power Games: Rules and Roles in Second Life”
• Inke Arms
• “Code as Performative Speech Act”
• The Performance of Algorithms
• David Worovics “Depressed Man”
• Helen Knowles “The Trial of SuberDebtThunderbot”
• Game Theory
• Adam Curtis, “The Trap”
• Harun Farocki, “Serious Games”
• Hito Steyerl, “Lecture
• Methods of Learning
• Role-Play
• Games
• Social Experiments
• Project-based learning
• Performative Reading
• Preparation for Role Play
• Week 9)
• Interactive Role Play
• A type of role playing game in which each participant assumes a particular
character and acts out various scenarios at events which last for a
predetermined time
• Using what we have learned throughout the course, we will create a role
play scenario in which each student in the course will be designated a role,
and using certain rules, we will act them out in a collaborative experiment.
• Week 10)
• Discussion on Yesterday’s Role Play
• Power dynamics, strictness of the rules, how can we analyze what
happened, how much was planned, was it a success or failure.
• What reflections do we have on this experiment keeping in mind the things
that we learned through the 5 weeks
• Group Discussion
• Recap on the course
• Reflections, critiques, etc.
The course progresses through 3 categories:
• Societal Roles: from Gender to Labour
• The Legal Theatre: Speech Acts and Algorithms
• Pedagogy and Role-Play: Collaborative Experiments
and involuntarily) in daily life, in legal settings, and cultural contexts. Through analysing
contemporary art practices, performance studies theories, and political/legal scenarios,
we will investigate the norms, traditions, and power structures around different actions/
gestures. Starting off with an introduction to the general ideas, the course will gradually
move towards the question of what performativity means now, in the context of constant
surveillance, consumption, virtual citizenships, and algorithmic control. Towards the end
of the course, we will aim to actively self-reflect on the the roles and positions of the
classroom setting, by participating in collaborative performative experiments (role-play,
workshops, performative games, and learning experiments.
Performance studies is an interdisciplinary field that studies performance and uses
performance as a lens to study the world, drawing from theories of the performing arts,
anthropology and sociology, literary theory, and legal studies.
Tentative Flow for 10 Weeks
• Week 1)Intro to Performativity
• Definitions, names, and general ideas
• Performativity as a theory
• Performance as Visual Arts practice
• Theatre, Intervention, Video Performance, Lecture Performance,
• Conversation about the curriculum
• Going over what to expect
• Intorucing the learning experiments at the end of the course
• Richard Schechner
• https://www.ukessays.com/services/example-essays/drama/richard-
schechners-performance-theory.php
• Video Samples of Contemporary Performance Art
• Bas Jan Ader, Marina Abramovic, Coco Fusco Zhang Huan, Francis Alys, Li
Ming, Sophie Calle, Adel Abdelssamad, Rabih Mroue
• Week 2) Agency and Roles / Gender and Sexuality
• Judith Butler
• “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology
and Feminist Theory”.
• “Performativity, Precarity, and Sexual Politics”
• Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
• The theory of the “homosocial”
• Contemporary Arts
• Drag Performance Artists
• Valet Export
• Heather Cassils “Becoming an Image”
• Catherine Chun Dong “Temporary Husband”
• Week 3) Labour and Consumption / Public Intervention
• Labour
• Gabriele Klein and Bojana Kunst
• “Labour and Performance”
• Theching Hsieh
• “Punching the Time Clock for One Year”
• “Work, Work, Work: A Reader on Art and Labour” Sternberg Press
• Consumption
• Adam Curtis
• Century of the Self
• Performativity of supply/demans
• Public Intervention as Art Performance
• Contemporary Arts
• Yes Men “BBC Report” and “WTO Resignation”
• Amal Kenawy “Silence of the Sheep”
• Lin Yilin “Safely Manouvring Across Lin He Road”
• Rebecca Belmore
• Week 4) Temporality of the Event: From Conference to Olympics
• Peggy Phalen”
• The Ontology of Performance, Representation without Reproduction”
• Claire Doherty
• Advertising/Preparing for a Future performative Moment
• Amelia Jones
• “Presence in Absentia: Experiencing Performance as Documentation”
• Artists
• Lee Walton, Situationist Happenings
• Guy Dubord
• Society of the Spectacle
• Week 5) Archetypes and Rituals
• Archetypes of Performativity
• Carl Jung psychology of Archetypes
• Amanda Beech “Covenant Transport: Move or Die”
• Typecasts, Tropes, and Sterotypes
• When Site Lost the Plot
• Ilona Gaynor “Under Black Carpets”
• Harun Farocki “The Interview”
• Watch and Analyze Video
• Group Discussion
• (Possible Studio Visit to Talk to Mohamed Abdelkarim, a local lecture-
performance artist.
• Week 6) Speech Acts and Spoken Word
• Speech Acts.
• those verbal assurances and promises which seem not only to refer to a
speaking relationship, but to constitute a moral bond between speakers,
• Performative Utterance
• Sentences which are not only describing a given reality, but also changing
the social reality they are describing.
• Illocutionary Acts and Gestures
• illocution is what was meant, and perlocution is what happened as a result.
• JL Austin
• Case Studies
• Zeleny, Jeff. “Obama and Roberts Try the Presidential Oath of Office Again.”
• http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/us/politics/22oath.html
• Week 7) Performing Bureaucracy, and Surveillance
• Maurizio Ferraris
• “Documentality”
• Rune Gade
• “Performing Archives / Archives of Performance”
• Legal Performance
• Declaration of Oath
• Witness, Testimony, Evidence and Judgement
• Rana Hamadeh
• What if justice is the degree to which one can access theatre?
• What constitutes a public audience in age of surveillance?
• Group Discussion
• Corina Lacatus
• “Soverignty as Performenace and Video Art”
• Janez Jansa, Janez Jansa, Janez Jansa
• Legally changing name as art performance
• http://www.mgml.si/en/tobacna-001-cultural-centre/exhibitions/archive-
exhibitions/janez-jansa-janez-jansa-janez-jansa-all-about-you/
• https://vimeo.com/46937250
• Performance Artworks Using Surveillance Technologies
• Wafaa Bilal “3rdi” 2010-11
• Hito Steyerl
• Trevor Paglan
• Week 8) Role-Play, Gaming, and Algorithms
• Study of Live-Action-Role-Plays
• Reading and Discussing Examples
• Maria Backe
• “Power Games: Rules and Roles in Second Life”
• Inke Arms
• “Code as Performative Speech Act”
• The Performance of Algorithms
• David Worovics “Depressed Man”
• Helen Knowles “The Trial of SuberDebtThunderbot”
• Game Theory
• Adam Curtis, “The Trap”
• Harun Farocki, “Serious Games”
• Hito Steyerl, “Lecture
• Methods of Learning
• Role-Play
• Games
• Social Experiments
• Project-based learning
• Performative Reading
• Preparation for Role Play
• Week 9)
• Interactive Role Play
• A type of role playing game in which each participant assumes a particular
character and acts out various scenarios at events which last for a
predetermined time
• Using what we have learned throughout the course, we will create a role
play scenario in which each student in the course will be designated a role,
and using certain rules, we will act them out in a collaborative experiment.
• Week 10)
• Discussion on Yesterday’s Role Play
• Power dynamics, strictness of the rules, how can we analyze what
happened, how much was planned, was it a success or failure.
• What reflections do we have on this experiment keeping in mind the things
that we learned through the 5 weeks
• Group Discussion
• Recap on the course
• Reflections, critiques, etc.
The course progresses through 3 categories:
• Societal Roles: from Gender to Labour
• The Legal Theatre: Speech Acts and Algorithms
• Pedagogy and Role-Play: Collaborative Experiments
Ash Moniz is a multi-disciplinary artist working primarily between the realms of performance, video, and installation. Moniz holds a BFA from OCAD University (Toronto, 2014), a scholarship at the Nanjing University of the Arts, and had participated in the Mass Alexandria Independent Studio Program in (Alexandria, 2016). Most of his recent projects, investigate the role of the nation-state within the politics of transportation logistics and citizenship, using actors, scripts, found footage, and interviews.
Moniz has exhibited with galleries and museums internationally, such as Townhouse Gallery (Cairo), Sishang Museum (Beijing), Minsheng Museum (Shanghai), and Birch Contemporary (Toronto). He was the assistant curator of the AMNUA Museum in Nanjing in 2013/14, and the director of the Boxes|Zones Quarters residency/ exhibition in Casablanca in 2014. He has presented lectures and talks at the University of Ottawa, OCAD University in Toronto, Silent-Green Kulturquartier in Berlin and State of Concepts in Athens.
Moniz has exhibited with galleries and museums internationally, such as Townhouse Gallery (Cairo), Sishang Museum (Beijing), Minsheng Museum (Shanghai), and Birch Contemporary (Toronto). He was the assistant curator of the AMNUA Museum in Nanjing in 2013/14, and the director of the Boxes|Zones Quarters residency/ exhibition in Casablanca in 2014. He has presented lectures and talks at the University of Ottawa, OCAD University in Toronto, Silent-Green Kulturquartier in Berlin and State of Concepts in Athens.
آش مونيز هو فنان متعدد الوسائط مقيم في القاهرة، يعمل في المقام الأول بين مجالات الفيديو والأداء والتجهيز. حصل على بكالوريوس الفنون الجميلة من جامعة أوكاد في تورونتو عام 2014، وشارك في برنامج ماس اسكندرية للدراسة المستقلة وستوديو الفنانين عام 2016. معظم مشاريعه الأخيرة تسلط الضوء على دور الدولة القومية ضمن سياسات النقل واللوجيستيات والمواطنة. عمل مونيز كمنسق مساعد بمتحف أمنوا في نانجينغ عام 2013-2014، ومدير برنامج إقامات الأحياء المتنقلة في الدار البيضاء عام 2014. وقد عرض مونيز اعماله في العديد من الجاليريهات و المتاحف الدولية، مثل متحف سيشانج (بكين)، متحف مينشنغ (شنغاهاي)، بيرش كونتمبراري (تورونتو)، لو كوب (الرباط)، جاليري باري نادييمي ( تورونتو)، ,تاون هاوس جاليري (القاهرة).
