FDTL – Assessing Group Practice

Workshop Materials

E 10. AGB

Exercise: Testing Interdisciplinary Practice

(Active Group Assignment)

Simon Persighetti Catriona Scott

DartingtonCollege of ArtsDartingtonCollege of Arts

Rationale:
This session provides an environment in which disparate texts, textualities and contexts are gathered and brought together to make a performance composition.
The elements suggested are symbolic representations of different arts fields in acknowledgement that in some workshops there may be no guarantee that participants are all from different disciplines.
The session asks the group to devise an interdisciplinary scenario in the hopes that their own strengths may be applied to the exercise. It is also hoped that their proposal for making a performance presentation might increase the personal investment of each individual so that they may more readily suggest pertinent modes of assessment for their work.
Suitable for:
Academic Staff, students and administrators involved with assessment. Minimum 6 and maximum 20.
Timings:
90 minutes total (all timings are approximate).
Small group discussion exercise 15 minutes
Performance task (including gathering materials) 50 minutes
Group discussion 30 minutes

Facilitators:

The session should be led by a supervisor to:

- set the tasks

- manage the time

- chair discussions

Resources needed:
Space for up to 20 people to move around, furniture clear, cassette/CD player.
Running the workshop:
Stage 1. Small group discussion exercise (15 minutes)
Split into groups of 3-6 (depending on size of whole group). Make a list of skills you have that do not obviously or directly relate to your current arts practice. For example, one of you may be an accomplished cook; another may have in-depth knowledge of tropical fish care. Through discussion draw up a list of these individual skills:
- See if you can identify any connections between these disparate areas of
knowledge.
- Identify ways in which you might be able to combine such skills to generate or
make some kind of art object or performance piece.
- What words/terminology do you employ to describe the joining-up of these ideas?

Stage 2. Performance task (50 minutes)

In the same group share out the following tasks to gather material for a collaborative presentation:
a)Find a photograph or a print of a painting.
b)Find a short newspaper article or story.
c)Select a track of recorded music or sound, or choose a song or piece to play live.
d)Invent a simple (easy-to-teach) sequence of movement based upon an everyday task.
e)Propose another task.
SPLIT UP TO GATHER/PREPARE THIS MATERIAL.
Reconvene as a group to share/show material gathered and to learn the movement sequence (d).
Next, find a way of combining all the material in an active presentation for a small audience.
Stage 3.
Show presentations.
Discuss methods of composing and the relationships generated between different types of material brought into the arena.
-To what extent can this piece of work be called interdisciplinary?
-Can you suggest other kinds of strategies for collaborating and exploring issues of interdisciplinary practice?
- What criteria and modes of assessment might be appropriate for assessing this
kind of work?
Guidance notes and recommendations:
The workspace needs to be set up with the necessary resources for gathering the material for composition. It may be necessary for participants to be asked in advance to bring performance stimulus materials used in Stage 2 with them on the day.
Variations:
The timings can be extended to allow a deeper engagement with the material if more time is scheduled in the planning of the workshop timetable

Bibliography:

Barthes, R. (1977) Image Music Text, London: Harper Collins
Barthes, R., Havas, R. (1976) ‘Listening’ Other Rooms Other Voices: Audio Works by Artists,
ed. Kurjakovic, D., Lohse, S. (1999), Zurich: Memory/Cage
Broadhurst, S. (1999) Liminal Acts, London: Cassell
Burroughs, W. (1985) The Adding Machine: Collected Essays, London: John Calder
Goulish, M. (2000) Thirty-nine Microlectures, London: Routledge
Hughes, D. (1996)Collaboration: Process or Product, Means or End, Democracy or Demagogy? Performing Arts International, Vol. 1, part 1, Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers
Kurjakovic, D. ‘Theoretical Note’, Other Rooms Other Voices: Audio Works by Artists,
ed. Kurjakovic, D., Lohse, S. (1999), Zurich: Memory/Cage
Lepecki, A.(1996) As If Dance Was Visible, Performance Research Volume 1, No.3 1996 – On Illusion – London: Routledge

Simon Persighetti

Catriona Scott

FDTL - Assessing Group Practice

First delivered 7.11.2001

1