170034 UE sex, performance, politics (2013S)

The course deals with explicite and implicite concepts of sexuality in current performative art. In October 2012 the performance of "Assassinate Assange";, scheduled in brut within the thematic frame Freedom of Speech, was threatened by Basisgruppe Theater-, Film- und Medienwissenschaft on grounds of an interview by the director of the show, Angela Richter, in which her opinion on the accusation of indecent assault against Julien Assange differed from the opinion of Basisgruppe. Such reactions in the realm of the sexual and the public happen more and more frequently. In this special case a profound need for critical debate became evident. What was missing in the discussions after the show was a look beyond moral and personal argumentation to get a closer view on the concrete use of theatrical means and the artistic form of the piece. This is where the course “sex, performance, politics” wants to log in. With the help of the Assassinate Assange show and related recent discourses within the genre of provocative performance work dealing with sexual and political themes it should be possible to trace mainstream attitudes towards the sexual (an analysis which is not finished with the state-of-the-art in gender-construction). The aim is to discover in how far the analysis of artistic strategies and its public responses are suitable to show dominant attitudes towards the sexual.