Public information: www.rcasu.com
Free Admission – booking not required
Contemporary artists Franko B, Oreet Ashery, Ralf Obergfell, and Tony Hornecker will be participating and exhibiting in the Gender and Performance Symposium at the Royal College of Art tomorrow.
Organised by the RCA Students’ Union, the exhibition, performances and symposium will question how gender, sex, embodiment and the real are constructed, participated in and performed. The events are part of DiverseRCA, a programme of public events that looks at strands of human rights including race, gender, religious belief, sexual orientation, disability and age in relation to art and design.
The exhibition features video, sculptural, photographic and performance works. Oreet Ashery presents Dancing with Men, a video where she participates, as a man, in a male-only religious festival. Ana Laura López de la Torre’s work, Everything is Not All Right, invites viewers to take the work, a flag, on a protest walk.
Ralf Obergfell’s series of photographs portray the elaborate creatures that frequent the nocturnal London club scene. Together with Tony Hornecker’s installation of ‘peep booths’ constructed out of old doors and found materials, they form the work Beautiful Freaks.
The Symposium addresses the relationship between performance art and our understanding of gender. While sociological and philosophical critiques of gender are well established, the symposium opens up the question of how gender can be informed by art or art practice, in particular, the practice of performance.
ORDER OF EVENTS:
2pm: Welcome and curators’ tour of the exhibition.
2pm to 6pm: Franko B’s installation I’m Thinking Of You, a succession of naked volunteers will participate in the work accompanied by specially composed music.
3pm: Tony Hornecker’s work comes to life when performers including Jonny Woo, Ryan Styles, Scottee, Jeanette, and Miss Transforma will occupy the booths accompanied by a live soundtrack by Per QX.
4pm: Masculinity and Performance talk.
6-7pm: Franko B and Oreet Ashery talk about their work.
7-8.30pm: Panel discussion includes participating artists, Ron Athey (performance artist), Pia Arber (performer), Stephen Wood (poet and stay-at-home dad), chaired by Dr Claire Pajaczkowska, Senior Research Tutor at the RCA.
