Photo curtesy of Bryan Saner

This semester I had the privilege of studying with artist Bryan Saner as part of his class The Body.

Bryan Saner is an influential interdisciplinary artist who’s work exists at the points of intersection between performance, activism, social practice, and sculpture. From 1995 to 2009 Bryan performed with the acclaimed Goat Island Performance Group, and is currently performing with Every House Has A Door, and dancing with Erica Mott.

In Bryan’s class, artists investigate “body-related representations that go beyond the concerns of video and performance art practices of the ’80’s, while acknowledging their legacy. A transhumanist lens is used to question our persistent fascination with the human body. Students explore issues at stake today that destabilize accepted boundaries between the natural and the artificial, and pose new questions about what it means to be human.”

The class was fantastic and the variety with which students explored the body were as diverse as the artists themselves. Students explored everything from grief, death, smell, pain, BDSM, cyborgs, digital performance, and robotics.

For my own research, I continued my exploration of the intersection between performance and technology. I created a performance where an animatronic robot version of myself (based on the open-source InMoov animatronic robot design), a digital projection of myself, and I ate a meal together while discussing the global food shortage, Prepper Culture, and the end of the world.

It was a tremendous privilege to work with Bryan. He is not only a masterful performer, he is a brilliant educator as well. You can be sure that I’ll be incorporating an iteration of some of the work I made for this class in my thesis installation this May. For more information on Interdisciplinary arts classes be sure to check out our website here.  For more information on Bryan Saner check out his website here