The World University of Design – India’s first and only University dedicated to education in the creative domain, has time and again taken initiatives to promote rarest of the rare art forms. Its School of Visual Arts recently hosted a 3-day long performance art workshop, which was conducted by globally renowned artist DAGMAR Glausnitzer-Smith from Germany. The workshop was co- facilitated by Anupam Saikia, a prolific painter, with years of experience in performance art. The unique program was aimed at inspiring young minds to refer to art and their own experiences in order to find solutions to life’s complexities in the digital age by adopting principles of performance art.

The essence of Performance Art

The most beautiful aspect of art is the elusive interpretations associated with it. Whether the artist is trying to communicate an emotion, an idea or something else, the essence really lies in how the audience receives and deconstructs it. The core objective of an artwork is to inspire people and transports them into different realities by moving them into a sub-conscious space. If any creative piece can spark the discussion of whether that piece is art or not, then its purpose is fulfilled. There are various kinds of arts, and amongst them is a very rare and unique form of art- Performance Art.

A marriage of Abstract and Realism

Performance art is form of art that is created through actions performed by the artist or other participants, which may be live or recorded, spontaneous or scripted. It is a form of non-representational art which believes that there is a route to feelings and responses that start with the brain. Artists come up with an idea or a conceived structure, put it into form – either as a painting, or as a performance – so that it evokes with some kind of response from the viewer/audience. The artist may have a preferred response, but like all artists, this is not anything they can control.

Nurturing Cs of creativity and curiosity through Performance Art 

Performance art have deep impacts on participants and help them to understand the process of gaining insight to understand – self – with the trust to become aware of the nature of the body-mind relationship with time and space. Performance art workshop question like how we are in the world senses which have been neglected due to conventional appropriations of language and the potentials of meaning.  Thus, helped participants developing a critical view towards “self” with an insight and understanding the qualities of artwork and investigating the origin of the idea process. 

Workshops on Performance Art 

The workshop implements practical exercises, observations, group discussions, formative feedback and performance art series. Also, workshop takes a practical and critical stance, which will animate the creative process. A performance art workshop usually, opens with brief introduction on performances, exercise, Tutorial, Planning and etc. which followed up by movement, action, understanding body and materials with exploration. The workshop includes discussion session on “Problems and Possibilities” of Performance Art and how the curation in Performance Art happens. A collaborative exercise call “Understanding Materials juxtaposed with text and Body” happens where students collectively solve the problems of the medium through Collaborative Performance rather than individual approaches 

Futuristic approach; Amalgamation of Art and Digitization 

Digital technology has filtered into daily performance practice. It is something that has developed on wider scale in more recent years. In the coming era performance art will be better known as internet performance art – which will be live streamed and available on the clicks. Over the past few centuries, artistic trends have undergone a huge transformation – from the classic portraiture and realism to abstract expressionism of the mid-20th century to the postmodernism of recent times. Now that we’re firmly in the all-consuming grasp of the digital age, it’s inevitable that the art we consume, and the way we consume it, is going to move with the times and present the not only the dreamy experience but also solve the complexities of the life.