“There is not one way of doing performance art, but many.”
PAS │ Performance Art Studies is an independent educational program that is offering intensive studies to young artists, art students and other interested people in Performance Art since 2008. The aim of these studies is to provide the participants a comprehensive form of teaching on Performance Art, everywhere in the world and always in cooperation with Performance Art festivals, art academies, museums and galleries.
PAS │ Performance Art Studies offers three main sections in education for Performance Art: The PAStudies, the PASproject and the PASyouth program. All these sections are divided into specific sections, for example: PAStudies (compact) or PASproject (advanced), to be able to adjust a certain program to the different working fields where PAS is involved. This flexibility allows to research in areas where performative strategies can support other fields of art and art education and influence other areas of life. This enables us to find the best method for different occasions.
The process
Performance Art is not possible without the process of researching, developing, trying out, experimenting and to show this in public presentations, where the actual point of the process is visible for the audience and the performer. Each professional performance artist will agree to the fact that even after years of doing Performance Art the presentation of a piece is just a fragment. And every performance artist will agree as well that the context and environment in which we are living creates also just a fragment of what we are as artists and people. Both together, the environment and the artistic processes give us the freedom to create shared spaces in an intensified dialogue with the audience, because art is for sharing and this is what PAS │ Performance Art Studies always aims.
The process itself is our chance and key to open doors and spaces, which were not visible before, neither for the participant nor the teacher.
PAS │ Performance Art Studies is following a specific teaching philosophy to keep the process as vivid as possible. We are sure that the soul of an art work is not really possible to teach. The soul can only be given by a creator itself. But we are sure, that we can teach the form of an art work. To achieve this we are allowing us to use all kind of other art forms that could help to find an understanding of Performance Art. Architecture, Dance, Theatre, Painting, Sculpture, Drawing, Music, Sound, Poetry, Film, Photography, Scenography, … have a knowledge that we can use to understand the specific parts in Performance Art works and that can help to strengthen individual concepts. If we enrich the formal aspects of teaching Performance Art with our philosophy and method we can observe within this process, that the participants have the chance to fill the form with their own souls.
For us it is important to extract that what is already there, what the participant have – even he/she is experienced or not. We focus on the individuality and create a surrounding where the participant becomes more sure, more confidence about his/hers actions and responsibilities, which leads to the opportunity to create an own soul. Teaching and learning is turning into a ping pong game, without the aspect of winning, between the participant and the teacher, both sides are teaching and learning within the process. We connect pedagogical knowledge with the running artistic process and gain an open working method which is beyond the regular teaching. This ‘game’ is full of personal qualities where the soul gets vivid. We state that at the end Performance Art as a form with a soul is possible to ‘teach’.
Follow the Bird!
PAS | website