Creating a Profession: Behaviour Art

Tania Bruguera leads an intensive five-day workshop in which participants are involved in the creation and design of a brand new and unique profession, which they will research from the initial concept through to implementation and promotion. This new profession will be a direct response to an everyday situation or scenario that the participant finds objectionable.

On day one, participants will suggest a behaviour that they find socially unacceptable, discuss it in depth, and put forward a number of actions to eradicate these problems. On day two, the new proposed profession will be presented and debated to ensure its usefulness and uniqueness. In the following session, participants will then actively design and give the new profession its identity and remit. On the fourth day, all involved will collate the results of these discussions and design processes with a view to publishing a booklet containing the essential defining criteria of this profession. On the final day, the profession will be presented to a general audience.

Wednesday 4 - Friday 6 July, 10 am and Saturday 7 - Sunday 8 July, 11am

Approximate duration: up to seven hours daily including a one-hour break

Tania Bruguera (b. 1968, Havana, Cuba)
Tania Bruguera identifies her background as an artist as 'the Cuban Revolution and all that brings with it.' Her performances and installations examine the relationship between ideology, political power and social behaviour. Explaining that her intention is 'to address the subtlety and seductiveness of power, and our own participation in its process,' her confrontational works demand that viewers become performers. Her writing and thinking, though less well known, are equally powerful and compelling. In 2002 she founded (and ran until 2009) the Cátedra Arte de Conducta, or School of Behaviour Art, at the Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana. Brugera describes the Art of Behaviour, which she continues to pursue in international projects, as 'teaching about ethics, sociology, and the ways in which an idea could be part of society.' She has participated in Documenta 11, Performa 07, and in numerous international biennales. Her five-year project Immigrant Movement International, focusing on the situation of homeless and displaced people, began in New York, in 2011 and moves on to different locations around the world.