Overview
This advanced seminar and studio course supports self-directed inquiry into contemporary queer performance across theatre, live art, dance, performance installation, digital media, and hybrid forms. Students examine the relationships among identity, embodiment, spectatorship, power, liveness, mediation, intimacy, risk, and visibility through sustained engagement with critical scholarship, artistic practices, and performance archives.
Students situate their creative work within relevant conversations concerning trans and nonbinary performance, queer of color aesthetics, crip and mad performance, ecologies and materiality, futurity and refusal, accessibility, care, and world-making. Through independent research, proposal development, studio experimentation, advising conferences, critique, documentation, and public work-in-progress sharings, students develop and revise a substantial performance or installation. The course emphasizes ethical collaboration, accountable representation, formal innovation, and the clear articulation of artistic decisions in an extensive artist statement.
Learning Outcomes
- Formulate a substantial artistic research question grounded in advanced queer performance scholarship and practice.
- Synthesize critical theory, artistic research, and studio experimentation to develop an original performance or installation.
- Devise formally innovative work across live, embodied, spatial, and mediated performance practices.
- Evaluate ethical, political, and accessibility implications of representational and participatory choices.
- Sustain and document an advanced rehearsal, research, and development process using appropriate professional methods.
- Apply structured critique to revise performance material, artistic methodology, and collaborative processes.
- Defend artistic decisions through a polished performance or installation and a rigorous written artist statement.
Timetable
| Type | Length | Frequency | Period |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lecture | 2 hours | Weekly | All semester |
| Studio | 3 hours | Weekly | All semester |
| Seminar | 2 hours | Fortnightly | First term |
| Tutorial | 1 hour | Fortnightly | Second term |
Assessment Schedule
| Type | Description | Weighting |
|---|---|---|
| Assignment | Artistic research proposal | 15.00% |
| Assignment | Critical research dossier | 15.00% |
| Deliverable | Studio experiments (4 × 5%) | 20.00% |
| Assignment | Work-in-progress showing and critique response | 10.00% |
| Capstone | Final performance or installation with artist statement | 40.00% |
Teaching Staff & Programs
This course is delivered jointly by faculty from the participating programs listed below. In line with the Douchewater Way, the University of Sexology tailors core instruction directly to each cohort's specific discipline — adapting curriculum to program needs rather than forcing students into a one-size-fits-all model. Learn more about our approach at The Douchewater Way.
