Kate Mahony is a British performance artist who studied an MFA at the Ruskin School of Art and is now an associate lecturer at Oxford Brookes. We we’re given the opportunity to attend a workshop from Kate about performance art and how to use that to enhance our presentations whilst at uni.
We looked at our environment and how we could utilise the materials and resources around us to help produce a presentation in a fun and exciting task set up by Kate.
But firstly, what is performance art?
In essence it is a live piece of art shown through movement typically involving an audience. Performance art unlike static art has no monetary value. It draws on such arts such as acting, poetry, music, dance, and painting, but it isn’t limited – there is no right or wrong with performance art.
The task:
We were asked to work in groups of 4-5 and travel around the campus together with our phones strapped to us in various places, with the aim of putting all the footage together and having this weird other perspective of our journey, letting the performance art examples Kate had shown us earlier inspire our work. This particular task might come under the *intervention category of performance art, as it’s something you wouldn’t really expect to see day to day.
I worked in a group with Sandie, Kim and Hannah and we decided to take a journey out of Red Oak, up to the main road, across the bridge, past Cheney student village and into the sports bar which was our final destination.
*What is an intervention?
It’s about disrupting or effacing something, you’re subverting the behaviours or actions that are expected.
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