PERFORMANCE AND SPORT

Performance and Sport (Graduate Seminar HTCA-5205-01) 
Visiting Faculty: Ryan Tacata
San Francisco Art Institute
Department of History and Theory of Contemporary Art
Spring 2016

Prior to the televised spectacles of the World Wrestling Federation, comedian Andy Kaufman bet $500 to any woman who could pin him in the ring. Kaufman's popularized stunts highlighted the theatricality of the sporting event while blurring the categories of the 'real' and the 'fake' in Kayfabe. This class examines the sporting event as a theater of the nation-state, gender, class, and race by focusing on artists who challenged the rules of the game. Artworks reviewed include: Robert Rauschenberg's Open Score; Tony Labat's performance training as an amateur boxer for Fight: A Practical Romance; Anna Banana's art-races known as Bananathons; Doug Hall, Chip Lord, and Optic Nerve's Game of the Week, following Hall's artist-in-residency with the San Francisco Giants baseball team; and Heather Cassils Becoming an Image. Throughout the course, we will analyze the medium of sports using the theoretical frames of spectacle and entertainment, performance and performativity, the culture industry, and the avant-garde.