This module is not currently running in 2024 to 2025.
This module addresses the influence of the early avant-garde on later experimental performance forms such as performance art and multimedia performance. It examines the impact of new technologies on performance and representation throughout the last century, and explores the relationship between media culture and theatre practice. Key modernist and postmodernist practitioners are discussed as the module traces the evolution of multimedia theatre and performance art. Students analyse how time, space and bodies manifest within a diversity of contemporary media art and performance art, and focus is placed on the nature of audience engagement. The module also considers questions concerning the live and mediated aspects of performance, and explores concepts such as 'liveness', ‘the body’, ‘intermediality’, ‘posthumanism’ ‘public space’ and ‘participation’.
Total contact hours: 48
Private study hours: 252
Total study hours: 300
Group or Individual Performance (50%)
Written Assessment (3000 words) (50%)
Chapple, Freda and C. Kattenbelt (2006), eds. Intermediality in Theatre and Performance, Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Dixon, Steve (2006) Digital Performance, MA: The MIT Press.
Goldberg, Rosalee (2011) Performance Art from Futurism to the Present, London: Thames and Hudson.
Kirby, Michael (1971) Futurist Performance, New York: Dutton.
Klich, Rosemary and Edward Scheer (2012) Multimedia Performance, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan
O'Reilly, Sally (2009) The Body in Contemporary Art, London: Thames and Hudson.
Pitches, Jonathan and Sita Popit eds. (2011) Performance Perspectives: A critical introduction, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Rush, Rush (2005) New Media in Art, London: Thames and Hudson
See the library reading list for this module (Canterbury)
On successfully completing the module students will be able to:
- demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the relationship between media culture, performance art and theatre;
- evaluate theoretical perspectives regarding the body, the live, and mediated aspects of performance;
- identify histories, forms and traditions of performance in the context of the avant-garde;
- understand the evolution of experimental performance practice such as multimedia theatre and performance art throughout the twentieth century;
- show extensive knowledge of a wide range of contemporary multimedia performance and performance art by studying relevant works of exemplary artists;
- demonstrate creativity with regards to working with the body and technologies in performance art and media art.
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