ARTH 12
Collaboration in Contemporary Queer Performance Winter 2022

Cross-listed WGSS 12
This is not the current course catalog

This course will explore a select archive of contemporary queer performance work, focusing on artistic strategies of collectivity and collaboration. We will consider how artists collide subcultural, improvisational, and temporary modes of community formation, focusing specifically on contemporary queer aesthetic strategies within a lineage of cultural production that is informed by LGBTQ grassroots activism and care-based organizing projects. The class will meet 2 days per week, with 3 hour sessions per class. In-class discussions will focus on artistic works, as well as adjacent curatorial, literary, and place-making experiments. Outside-of-class assignments will include short readings of artists’ essays and critical theory; viewing performance documentation; and writing creative reflections on one’s own practice and process. The goal of the class is to invite students to rethink their own making, curating, and writing practices in ways that acknowledge, include, and are shaped by working with others. Shoghig Halajian is a curator and art historian who serves on the Board of Directors at Human Resources LA, and previously was Assistant Director at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions. She is co-founder and co-editor of the online journal Georgia, which was awarded a Creative Capital I Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Art History, Theory and Criticism with a Critical Gender Studies Emphasis at the University of California San Diego.