Performance Art at Secondary Level

Performance Art at Secondary LevelSheridan Horn

This article considers the far-reaching potential and the particular characteristics of performance art within the secondary art curriculum. It discusses the means by which an art department has incor-porated it into their teaching curriculum at a state secondary school with reference to installations and the work of different performance artists in residence; details of their performances, methods and artistic intentions are discussed. After consid-eration of the varied responses from staff and students within Trinity Catholic School, the values and significance of direct experience are discussed. In its transience and its reflecting of the performative acts common to ordinary life, performance art offers a challenge to young people’s thinking and creativity.

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JADE 28.2 (2009)© 2009 The Author. Journal compilation © 2009 NSEAD/Blackwell Publishing Ltd

161At Trinity School the art department has been resolutely challenging the confines of an audit based culture with some success (Davies and Hughes 1993). We have established a rich tradi-tion of artists in residence, annual installations, an outreach programme involving local schools and the community and a core philosophy of ‘learning for all’ (Horn 2006, 2008). The Artist Teacher Scheme made possible a learning expe-rience in which teachers and pupils now regu-larly engage in dialogue, developing their own visual language through practical, theoretical and critical application.

In 2006 I enrolled on the MA Art Practice and Education course at Birmingham CU and quickly realised that teachers’ access to the rapid changes in contemporary art practice and theory is restricted by professional demands. My teach-ing philosophy was challenged when I undertook the module ‘Performance and Performativity as Art Practice’.

I had previously experimented with the idea of ‘teaching as theatre’, which involved changing the classroom environment into a mortuary, oper-ating theatre or scene of the crime scenario and my acting in role as a surgeon or forensic patholo-gist/investigator. Individuals joined in the tableaux as patients, a murder victim and so forth. In the scene of the crime project, parallels were drawn between how a genuine scene of crime officer disseminates a crime scene and how an artist gathers information for a final piece. Students used these lessons to produce drawings, photo-graphs, different media pieces and notes; they resulted in discussion work and general evidence gathering with a view to producing a final solu-tion. The pupils found themselves free to identify with a figure/situation but were unlikely to become the psychological centre of the work.

Performance art has a powerful immediacy and challenges notions of cultural and social constructs. Despite their rarity within secondary education, performance and live art has tremen-dous potential for challenging young people’s responses, ideas and understanding. Its direct and confrontational approach ensures active engagement from the spectator. It allows the

viewer to engage directly with the work as it unfolds. As Phelan (1993, 146) notes:

Performance’s only life is in the present. Perform-ance cannot be saved, recorded, documented or otherwise participate in the circulation of the representations of representation: once it does so it becomes something other than performance.

The performance artist is simultaneously the media, process and the visual creation of the performance itself. Performance and performa-tivity as art practice is primarily associated with being alive and active. It is enacted in the present moment and ‘dies’ after viewing. Its absence from the secondary curriculum may arise from its apparent conflict with examination assessment criteria which require evidence of product and process-driven outcomes. Or is it because this medium is unpredictable and challenges such concepts as linearity, conformity and order?

In departmental discussions, I encouraged staff to debate the possibilities that this discipline could raise in terms of cross-curricular involvement and open discourse within the school. This led to a performance art project entitled ‘Incarceration’ which was delivered to all key stages in 2007–8 and culminating in a performance and live art evening in February 2008. The performances took place in public areas of the school and across subject disciplines as a means of introducing this art practice to all members of the school commu-nity. Each artist worked for a total of six days between September 2007 and January 2008 and was contracted to produce a separate work for the performance and live art evening in February. This resulted in over 21 performances as the artists often produced several pieces of work during a single day. The pieces were performed in front of audiences ranging from over a hundred people to an intimate audience of one.

The impact of the performance artists upon the school communityIn this section I will introduce the work of each performance artist and access their accumulative impact on the school whilst in residency.

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Aaron WilliamsonAaron Williamson is a profoundly deaf perform-ance artist whose work explores the interrelation-ships between real time, film, documentation and dissemination. In a conversation with Marguard Smith (Williamson 2008, 8) he states:

I know a lot of artists that work in performance are quite dubious about documentation since it can be distorted and exploited to produce a grabby, iconic version of the work. For me though, there’s an element of fiction to the documentary writing I do about my work and I’m prepared to re-work documentation to draw out or create a heighten-ing of the conceptual aspects of the work rather than purporting to be an authentic record of an event or experience.

Pupils experienced this interconnectedness for themselves. They witnessed a live performance which was documented via film and photogra-phy. Students were encouraged to describe the performance from memory or write about it as fiction. They were also required to produce a research write up which supported their individ-ual art practice. This allowed them to gain under-standing of how an art work can be constantly

reinterpreted with one mode of representation triggering another to create a trajectory of repre-sentatives.

Blind Man’s Bluff – lunch hour, the school canteen September 2007 – duration 20 minutesDuring this performance, I elected to stand in a corner of the dining hall whilst Aaron Williamson ordered a pasta dish and then sat down opposite two boys eating their lunch. Having eaten his meal, he selected objects from a bag at his feet and placed them on the table in front of him. Initially contextual (a sandwich box, knife, slice of cake), they steadily became more surreal: a cheese grater, onions, a lemon, a life size plastic magpie, string, scissors, a roll of tape … When the single, black shoe appeared, children stopped eating and started to nudge each other. The performance gestures became more intriguing. Williamson clumsily cut the top off the lemon with his knife and tied the tiny segment onto his wrist. A crowd started to gather round. Having peeled and eaten part of an onion, Williamson halved one, strapping the raw sides onto his eyes (Figure 1). When he suddenly got up and stag-gered towards them, the crowd peeled away

Opposite page:

Figure 1 Aaron Williamson, ‘Blind Man’s Bluff’. 20 minutes, the canteen.

This page:

Figure 2 Sheila Fawkes, Untitled. A performance piece exploring imprisonment.

Figure 3 Sheila Fawkes, Untitled. A performance work exploring an authoritarian figure.

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from him and pupils screamed. Sitting down again, he sucked a lemon, then stuffed bicarbo-nate of soda into his mouth – it foamed alarm-ingly. Throughout this episode emotions ranging from hilarity to revulsion, concern and incredulity registered on their faces. Williamson again stood up and a nightmarish parody of the childhood game of blind man’s bluff ensued with the partic-ipants screaming in waves of horror and delight.

Throughout the performance students kept running up to the adults present exclaiming ‘What is happening?’, ‘What does this mean?’. This was the first performance piece to have ever taken place in a public forum at Trinity. The disorienta-tion and fragmentation experienced by those present was palpable.

During subsequent art lessons pupils who had witnessed the event described their experiences to those who had not been there and together they unlocked the artist’s intentions and their perceptions of the piece. They discussed what it might mean to lose one’s senses and the treat-ment of those who do not conform to socially accepted norms of behaviour. Some expressed shock at how quickly the canteen’s atmosphere had been disrupted. This opened up further debate about how difficult it is for an individual to stand outside an escalating situation and to think and act independently.

Sheila FawkesAn opportunity to act as an individual against a crowd response occurred in Sheila Fawkes’ first appearance.

Sheila Fawkes is a feminist artist and profes-sional jazz singer who deploys a range of media. In her first performance, during the lunch hour,

she sat in a chair with her hands and feet tied together. The chair was placed inside a rectangu-lar space etched out using tiny grey stones. The audience gathered outside the rectangle (Figure 2). Loudspeakers placed at the back of the hall boomed out Shostakovich’s String Quartet no. 15. Fawkes (2008) stated: ‘I wanted this to be an internalised performance. I made it a deliberate ploy to only look outside the constructed space engaging directly with individuals via eye contact.’

Once the audience had settled Fawkes responded to the music, creating body move-ments hampered by the bindings. She remained mute despite taunting comments from the audi-ence. As the performance proceeded the experi-ence took on a monotonous, harrowing quality and after half an hour some individuals threw in food items such as a bread roll and apple core, much to the disgust of the others. After 40 minutes a young boy stepped into the rectangle and helped the prostrate artist to her feet and gave her a hug. The audience erupted into spon-taneous applause and the performance ended.Throughout her residency Fawkes’ work alter-nated between figures portrayed as vulnerable, suffering and isolated to self-created characters


in positions of authority. Prior to one perform-ance, Fawkes painted her face red and wore a turban, gloves and a coat with a long train of hessian and fine silk. She then marched around the corridors and in-and-out of classes, commu-nicating her intentions with a whistle. Her sudden bizarre appearance commanded an awed silence (Figure 3).

However, on performing a piece concerning the repression of women in an office of female admin-istrative staff, one of them instructed her: ‘This is not art, but a disruptive influence – get out!’

As the project gained momentum, pupils and staff became drawn to the immediacy of the medium. The majority of those who encountered a performance enjoyed its interactive nature and the questions it raised. Williamson’s do-it-your-self aesthetic encouraged students to experi-ment with ideas as they arose and urged them to perform in front of friends who could document it for them. To begin with, students produced simple performative gestures (Figures 4 & 5) but as their confidence grew, their concepts became more complex and included a layering of narra-

tives (Figure 6). Key Stage 3 pupils worked in teams producing films of their performances and Key Stages 4 and 5 pupils created independent performance outcomes for the purposes of examination assessments.

Morena MorenoMorena Moreno, an Italian performance artist who originally trained as a dancer, explored a vari-ety of issues including abuse, child labour and obsessive-compulsive disorders. Like Fawkes, many of her works were endurance pieces and directly involved interaction with the pupils.

In one work she condensed the life sentence of a prisoner down to the unit of a single day. At morning break, eight year 12 students wearing surgical masks and white suits marched Moreno around the school grounds. One of the ‘guards’ informed everyone with a loud hailer to stand clear because they were escorting a dangerous and violent criminal (Figure 7). Other ‘guards’ handed out leaflets which stated that Moreno could only be contacted on an email address as she would be locked in a cell within the school.

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Opposite page:

Figure 4 Year 9, ‘Tied Hands’.

Figure 5 Sarah Payman Shaw, Year 12, ‘Bound Feet’.

Figure 6 Charlotte Williams, Year 12, ‘Hooded Figure’.

This page:

Figure 7 Morena Moreno, ‘The Prisoner’.

Figure 8 Morena Moreno, Untitled. A performance piece highlighting child labour in the fashion industry.

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For the remainder of the day the prisoner occu-pied a tiny room in the art department, her only contact with the outside world via a laptop. As the pupils left at the end of the school day, she re-emerged, transformed by makeup and clothing into a frail old woman who shuffled into a taxi and was driven away.

Increasing numbers of children asked to see her cell with its makeshift bed and messages scrawled on the walls. In this way the dialogue concerning this particular performance contin-ued despite the artist’s absence.

At other times Moreno could be viewed wear-ing a suit made of glossy magazine fashion adverts, furiously stitching together photocopies at a sewing machine. The photocopies contained facts about child labour. Eventually the floor around her was strewn with a blanket of stitched paper (Figure 8).

SummaryMany of the artists’ performances were playful, and Williamson in particular enjoyed producing comic slapstick works, including thumbing for a

lift outside the school with a tower of suitcases piled up beside him. Moreno enjoyed playing around with the ‘liveness’ of performance. For example, she set up a camera in one room and various Key Stage 3 groups watched her perform on a television screen in another room. The audi-ence knew that she was performing live, but specialised camera effects created interruptions whereby the screened version suddenly changed colour, sped up or slowed down producing an oscillatory effect between fact and fiction.

Sometimes individuals did not always realise until after the event that they had even seen a performance. This occurred despite the presence of an art technician filming the event and specta-tors interacted with the artist as if it was reality such as fetching them a glass of water. As Kaprow (2003, 11) observes, ¬‘the circle closes: art is bent on imitating life, life imitates art’.

As both performers and spectators, we act out our lives in a myriad of rituals and perform-ance gestures until death; as in our perform-ances, the boundary where living stops and art begins is often indistinct.


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Sheridan Horn

167The introduction of relational aesthetics into the classroomHaving observed how rapidly students were able to articulate complex issues through observing and experiencing the mechanisms of perform-ance art, I decided to introduce Key Stage 4 and 5 pupils to my own relational aesthetics work ‘The Wake’.

My reasoning for this was that students who directly experience an interactive work for them-selves concerning incarceration and death would be more open to the critical appreciation of art works such as Kienholz’s ‘The State Hospital’ (1966) and Gormley’s ‘Bed’ (1981).

‘The Wake’ consisted of a room laid out with refreshments and in an adjourning space, an open coffin, containing a ‘corpse’. Sombre music was played as the ‘mourners’ ate and drank and visited the ‘deceased’ to pay their last respects by leaving written notes. In this work the ‘guests’ themselves became the art piece; the spectator either engaged with or observed interactions and encounters between individuals. This lesson was observed by a visiting art advisor Stephen Belin-fante (2007):

[This] was one of the most inspired and engaging classroom experiences I have ever seen: role play in experiencing a funeral or wake. Students taken out of their ‘comfort zone’ and presented with a series of challenging tasks and issues for discus-sion. Student discussion was at an extremely high level, dealing with complex cultural and artistic issues. All learned a lot and were visibly moved by the experience of the lesson. Very encouraging to see mixed age groups learning together.

This assimilated experience, that mixed reality and fiction, placed unwitting students in one of the many labyrinths in which art operates. Having situated themselves in an artwork that unfolded in the present they were enabled to discuss representations of Kienholz’s ‘State Hospital and Gormley’s ‘Bed’, connecting these past and present works in terms of the artists’ intentions and their personal responses to mental and phys-ical incarceration, death and social responsibility. These same students would, I suspect, now be

more confident about formulating possible para-digms concerning future artworks such as Gregor Schneider’s (Harris 2008) dream of displaying a person dying naturally in an art gallery or Marina Abramovic’s (Iles 2008) intention to stage her own funeral as part of a performance, at the Manchester International Festival in July 2011 and then re-enact it again when she is dead.

Young people need to be given opportunities in the classroom that allow them to realise that art is an ongoing dialogue spanning backwards and forwards in time reflecting our attitudes about what it is like to live in the present and our ongo-ing concerns about the future.

Incarceration – a performance and live art evening February 2008 – duration 2½ hoursThe culmination of the Incarceration project was a live art evening which included selected work from Key Stages 3 and 5, performance artists in resi-dence and myself as an artist teacher. Key Stage 3 work was represented by a display of straitjackets (produced with Miriam Zevalking, a fashion and textile artist) and films of performance gestures associated with constriction presented on plasma screens. As part of their AS final submission, the year 12 students produced individual perform-ances and live art pieces for this.

During the evening spectators were taken through a series of experiences which were designed to challenge and entertain. Some of the works were considered highly disturbing and for this reason, children under the age of 14 were not admitted. At the tours beginning and end, visitors found themselves as guests in the ‘wake’ (Figure 9). Fifteen at a time were called into a tiny room and tied by the wrist onto a long rope line. Alto-gether 13 tours took place leaving at ten minute intervals. The groups were each led by a mute guide holding a torch around the blacked out school interior.

Experiences included witnessing a bruised bride whose wedding dress was embroidered with locks and chains (Figures 10 & 11). Her bridesmaid carried flowers and by means of a concealed Walkman played a disjointed rendition of ‘Here comes the Bride.’ Other performances included a bulimia sufferer (Figure 12), a diabetic

Opposite page:

Figure 9 Sheridan Horn, ‘The Wake’. A relational aesthetics piece.

Figure 10 Josie Lloyd, Year 12, ‘Here Comes the Bride’.


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coeliac’s dilemma (Figure 13), a political prisoner (Figures 14 & 15) and a psychiatric patient (Figure 16). Some parts of the building emitted sound-scapes such as someone frantically banging on a door and the high pitched squealing of pigs which reverberated up and down the stairwells.

Williamson produced a work entitled ‘Medico Freakshow: The man whose brains fell out of his ear’ based on a Victorian freakshow (Figure 17). Once the audience were gathered, an assistant dramatically pulled back a curtain to reveal a post-operative patient sitting in a courtyard on an autopsy table. A large vacuum pipe emitting smoke led from his ear into a bucket. From it Williamson pulled out a model brain wet with blood and proffered it to the audience. As a final gesture he unhooked his surgical mask to reveal dental retractors which stretched open his lips displaying his clenched teeth. The assistant then closed the curtains with a flourish. ‘Here the sly, gimmicky implication (that plays up to prejudicial perceptions) was that along with my hearing, I lost my brain too’, stated Williamson (2008, 69).

Spectators were temporarily left in a dark room and entertained by a middle aged lap dancer (Figure 18). They also witnessed a sleep-ing, pregnant teenager trapped inside a vitrine lit by a single light bulb (Figure 19). The audience meandered through the building, sometimes

glimpsing other chain gangs or strange set-ups down side corridors such as children scratching on walls and hanging cocoons, one of which contained a worming figure. Films ranged from those presented on televisions to one that filled an entire wall in the dining hall. Many spectators disliked being tied up together at the beginning of the tour, but after such eerie and visceral encoun-ters, they quickly bonded with their particular group. The evening was a highly successful and dynamic experience.

ConclusionThe idea of bringing performance artists and rela-tional aesthetic experiences into the art curricu-lum at secondary level was revelatory. There was no barrier between artist and spectator and the visceral content of the performances meant that the viewer was affected on immediate terms.

Performance art is an incredible medium with which to communicate complex and contentious perspectives about contemporary culture. Because the performances took place in a variety of settings within the school, it opened up a wider debate across age ranges and curriculum areas. Students from every key stage were involved in the Incarceration project and so conversations were inclusive and discursive. Staff also took the opportunity to work on a common theme by combining classes, both in art and as a cross-curricular initiative. This allowed students of vary-ing ages to work together on complex issues such as gender, politics, mental illness, political dissidence and death.

Both performance art and relational aesthetics allow one to experience a work directly as it unfolds. The availability of the artist facilitated analytical discussion for greater clarity. The inten-sity of this intriguing art form provoked extreme but always fascinated responses.

Dorothea Von Hentlemann (Hoffman & Jonas 2005, 179) claimed that:

Performance makes us aware that meaning takes place in the present. As an art form with a begin-ning and an end, it implies a specific temporality, spatiality and embodiment of the production and reception of art. But in a more general sense the


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Opposite page:

Figure 11 Josie Lloyd, Year 12, ‘Here Comes the Bride’. Close-up detail of wedding dress.

This page:

Figure 12 Natasha Medley Whitfield, Year 12, ‘Bulimia Sufferer’.

Figure 13 Sarah Payman Shaw, Year 12, ‘Do not feed the Diabetic Coeliac’.

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paradigm of performance indicates how society and social relations are continuously produced and reproduced through actions performed by every individual, constantly anew, though within certain rules.

In this sense an action gains significance by being repeated; we are able to conceive of it in the past, perform it in the present and visualise it in the future. The nature of being human and living in a day-to-day routine involves our both performing and observing performative acts. Performance art and relational aesthetics reflect the act of living and when presented to young minds they provoke conceptual thinking and kick start creativity.

Since this project we have now firmly embed-ded performance, live art and relational aesthet-ics into our teaching at Trinity School. These experimental forms allow students to assimilate art as life and life as art directly and it is this correl-ative flux that creates productivity.

During a conversation with Noel Daniel concerning fragmentation in artists’ work, Doug Atkin (2006, 8) observed:

I think that the experience of non-linearity and frag-mentation is with us all the time. They are some-times seen as dangerous and often associated with chaos. But in many ways they are truer to reality. I want … to challenge the assumption that disorien-tation is dangerous and to propose that random-ness we encounter in life can be productive.

By its very nature, performance art is temporary, unstable and transient. The only constant in life is change. And it is this concept that artists distil in visual form in order to make sense of what it means to be alive. Performance art and interactive experi-ences in schools can provide a catalyst for creative production and lateral thinking. An art curriculum at secondary level needs to constantly evolve so that it incorporates traditional approaches, craft skills and contemporary practices to reflect the multidis-ciplinary, interactive, political and performative society in which we live. It is only by challenging teachers through professional development and challenging the curriculum that the climate for chil-dren’s learning will change and reflect our constantly evolving global society.


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Opposite page:

Figure 14 (inset) Marina Moreno, ‘Political Prisoner’.

Figure 15 Marina Moreno, ‘Political Prisoner’.

This page:

Figure 16 Lydia Healy, Year 12, ‘Psychiatric Patient’.

Figure 17 Aaron Williamson, ‘Medico Freakshow’.


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Opposite page:

Figure 18 Sheila Fawkes, Untitled. A performance piece looking at a woman’s place in Western society.

This page:

Figure 19 Sheridan Horn, ‘Sleeping Beauty’.

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ReferencesAitkin, D. (2006) Broken Screen. New York: DAP Distributed Art Publishers Inc.

Belinfante, S. (2007) Trinity Catholic School Art Department Report, external moderating visit 18 October

Davies, D. & Hughes, A. (1993) Talking in Class. Birmingham: The Article Press

Fawkes, S. (2008) Interview, 1 November

Harris, G. (2008) Dead Head, Art World, No. 7, pp. 52–6

Hoffman, J. & Jonas, J. (2005) Perform. London: Thames and Hudson

Horn, S. (2006) Inspiration into installation: an exploration of contemporary experience through art, International Journal of Art & Design Education, Vol. 25, No. 2, pp. 134–45

Horn, S. (2008) The contemporary art of collaboration, International Journal of Art & Design Education, Vol. 27, No. 2, pp. 144–57

Iles, C. (2008) Marina Abramovic, Art World, No. 7, pp. 39–41

Kaprow, A. (2003) Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life. London: University of California Press

Phelan, P. (1993) Unmarked: The Politics of Performance. London and New York: Routledge

Williamson, A. (2008) Performance/Video/Collaboration. London and Kingston: Live Art Development Agency and Kiosk


Sheridan Horn

Performance Art at Secondary Level

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