The way of the artist at work

Performance workshop presented as part of “China Birth and Belonging” Conference at Wellcome Collection London. The performance workshop explores 1) the relationships formed by the artist with participants towards a specially designed outcome of life class, combining conventions of copying in drawing practice using aspects of performance and participatory art practice, 2) the possibility of a performance document and its post production made during the live production of drawings, and 3) the relationship between the results of the drawing activity and the strategies of the photographic and video cameras in an attempt to disrupt the documented reality of the unfolding narrative. The performance workshop is part of a practice-led PhD research project based at University of Lincoln. Entitled “A Body of Relations: Reconfiguring the Life Class” the research explores the problem of participatory art practice, between personal and political intention and how these are communicated through forms, medium and presentation of documentation. The research develops the argument in a parallel discussion between participatory practice’s tendency to adopt educational frameworks and the reconfiguration of the conventional life class using performance and participatory practice. In doing so the potential of a ‘reconfigured life class’ begins to a) question the constructed reality in participatory documentation, b) re-appraise the role and status of the life model and life drawing, and c) present new critical approaches to teaching drawing in the contemporary life class.