Performing (in) Place: Experimental Ethnography, Spatial History, and Creative Mutual Aid

(Left) Photo Credit: Robbie Sweeny


HUM C132 / ENVDES  C132 / THEATER 166
4 units, Humanities Studio Course
Instructor: Erika Chong Shuch with For You Performance Collective
Watch info session recording here.

We know that COVID-19 has disproportionately affected our elders. This course offers an opportunity to ease some of the hardships associated with the pandemic through social engagement. Working in collaboration with diverse elders whose lives are connected to the history of South Berkeley, we will engage in a multi-generational creative research project. Through ethnographic research, experimental mapping, and performance making, distinct histories of South Berkeley are revealed through the lived experiences of those elders. In particular, we will generate a series of performative, “ephemeral monuments” that honor the legacies of these elders. These monuments will commemorate meaningful sites in the lives of our collaborating elders, and are devised in the spirit of gift-giving and creative mutual aid. These site-based performative gifts will draw from each students’ individual creative practices and culminate in a public “unveiling” virtual or in-person pending COVID-19 regulations. For You is a dedicated practice of performance making initiated by Erika Chong Shuch, Rowena Richie, and Ryan Tacata in 2016; we bring strangers together for shared, intimate encounters and consider performance-making as gift giving. For more information on For You visit: www.foryou.productions

Keywords: Ethnographic Research, Performance, Social Practice, Elders, COVID-19. 


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