Performance art at the campusphere: pedagogical experiments on-site

ABSTRACT

Following a unique practice and research laboratory entitled Performance: Site/Self that took place in 2013–2015, this article discusses the implementation of performance art at an academic site – the Tel Aviv University campus. This pedagogical and artistic initiative, characterised by the transgressive pedagogy of performance art applied to site-specific performance, broadens the site’s primary educational function and reframes it as a relational and polemic space. As an alternative to the habitual organisation of disciplinary knowledge, the campus is recast as a campusphere through imaginative performative actions. Through the personal and critical situations created, the academic site functions as a surrounding for subjective experiences; as a social and economical structure; and as a space charged with local histories, identity politics, and collective memories.

KEYWORDS:

• Performance art
• transgressive pedagogy
• site-specific
• university campus
• campusphere

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributor

Ben-Shaul Daphnais a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Theatre Arts at Tel Aviv University. Her research deals with contemporary theatre and performance, performance collectives, reflexive performance, and spatial practices. Her current research focuses on contemporary Israeli site-specific performance, funded by the Israel Science Foundation (ISF).

Notes

1 The programme was supported by the Humanities Fund grant for the TAU Innovations in Teaching Programme and Yad Ha’Nadiv, in cooperation with Freddie Rokem, Nurit Yaari, Ruth Kanner, Daphna Ben-Shaul, Dror Harari, Ira Avneri, Moshe Perlstein, and other lecturers and artistes. Each year, one of the laboratories served as the core course of the programme syllabus. In addition to performance art, the laboratories were dedicated to classical texts and the choir, as well as Brecht’s writings as key topics. In addition, a number of theoretical courses related to performance as research were taught. During the four years in which the programme was conducted as a scheduled project, it was designated for postgraduate students (mainly MA and some PhD), each with a two-year attendance cycle. The students were of different social backgrounds and varied ages (averaging around 25–30 years old), and studied theatre in different programmes. Activity in the Performance: Site/Self laboratory involved two weekly meetings with the entire group (each session lasting four hours or more) throughout the academic school year. In the first year (2013–2014), there were 11 participants; in the second year (2014–2015), there were 20. The descriptions of the laboratory do not distinguish between the two groups, since the rationale behind the activity in both academic years was the same.

2 The laboratory actions also took place at various locations in central Tel Aviv, in Jerusalem, at a kibbutz, in private homes, and at the Theater der Welt in Mannheim (2014). They also included theoretical works and variations on the ‘black market’ performative model (a variation of the ‘blackmarket for useful knowledge and non-knowledge’ developed by Hannah Hurtzig since 2005), in the form of stalls selling knowledge delivered in one-on-one or small group settings.

3 Notable in this regard is the precedent set by Exercise in Citizenship by Public Movement (a group founded in 2006 that defines itself as research body exploring public choreography). This performance, carried out on the Tel Aviv University campus in 2010 with the participation of students, created a score that responds to university orders and behavioural patterns. One of the actions was a security check that heightened the degree of physical contact; another combined a lecture with a rock performance (Ben-Shaul 2014).

4 Apart from specific socio-economic struggles led by the student associations in recent years, the students’ self-organisation played a significant role in the social protests of 2011, not only on campus but mainly on city streets. Another significant occurrence is the self-organisation of Palestinian students, who held highly contentious ceremonies to mark the Nakba (Arabic for ‘Catastrophe’) at the plaza just outside the campus, as well as at other universities, to commemorate the events of 1948. Another actual struggle that is taking place at several universities involves a students’ protest against the university cleaners’ exploitative employment by manpower companies.

5 Once, in 2004, at the university’s Department of Theatre Arts, director and curator Daphna Kron (then a student) performed a work titled Moon Walk, which involved a participatory itinerary that gave symbolic expression to its Palestinian past.

6 In 2003, members of the NGO Zochrot (Hebrew for ‘Remembering’), dedicated to documenting, commemorating, and representing the Palestinian life before 1948 and the Nakba, especially to the Hebrew-speaking Israeli public, petitioned the university with a request that a plaque be attached to (or be fixed near) the Green House building to commemorate its past. The request was denied.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Israel Science Foundation [Grant Number 761/15].