Brown partners with RISD to offer art performance series

The series features performances that cross disciplines, drawing on visual and graphic arts, movement, and contemporary, folk and popular performance.

by Mary Jo Curtis

Audiences will be hiking College Hill on Nov. 13 when playwright/actor Eric Bogosian and performance artist Julia Mandle appear in separate venues as part of the first RISD-Brown Performance Art Series.

Bogosian, left, will perform and speak about his work in Leeds Theatre at 4 p.m. that day. Mandle, of the New York-based experimental arts organization J Mandle Performance, will discuss her work and give a slide presentation of some of her site-specific group performances at 7 p.m. in the RISD Auditorium.

The series, which kicked off last month with appearances by performance artists Tania Bruguera, William Pope.L and Buzz Spector, features performances that cross disciplines, drawing on visual and graphic arts, movement, and contemporary, folk and popular performance. It was organized by Brown Associate Professor of Theatre, Speech and Dance Rebecca Schneider and RISD Assistant Professor of English Wendy Walters.

"Wendy started the series and contacted me, since it's an area we're both interested in," said Schneider. "We invited people who do things across the spectrum, and it's gone very well thus far. ... It's a great collaboration. This is a field that intersects the critical theory that's strong at Brown and the creative stuff RISD is so good at."

"It's great to see the audiences from both schools, and there's some great interaction going on," added Walters. "We feel really lucky to have pioneer artists like Martha Rosler and Joan Jonas. In some cases, they're not as well known as others, but these are people who were key in defining the genre."

Bogosian is also coming to campus as a guest of the Creative Arts Council and Lawton Wehle Fitt Artist-in-Residence program; in addition to his appearance in Leeds, he'll teach several master classes. In conjunction with his visit, the CAC will present screenings of two of his movies - "Talk Radio" on Nov. 11 at 7 p.m. in Smith-Buonanno Hall (room 106), and "Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll" on Nov. 12 at 7 p.m. in MacMillan's Starr Auditorium.

The RISD-Brown series will continue throughout this semester and next, as follows:

Dec. 3 - Video/performance artist Joan Jonas; 6:30 p.m., RISD Museum
• Jan. 11 - Screening of "Not for Sale: Feminism and Art in the USA during the 1970s," directed by Laura Cunningham, music by Yoko Ono; 3 p.m., RISD Museum
• Jan. 28 - Pioneer video artist Martha Rosler; 6: 30 p.m., RISD Museum
• March 11 - Dancer/performance artist/storyteller Anna Beatrice Scott; 7 p.m., RISD Auditorium
• April 11 - Conceptual and performance artist Coco Fusco; 7 p.m., Stuart Theatre

In addition, from Nov. 20 through Feb. 1, the RISD Museum will host "Gloria: Another Look at Feminist Art of the 1970s," an exhibition that explores the legacy of feminism through action- and performance-based works.