Just a word, and the word a movement.
Dada Manifesto, Hugo Ball (1916)

Free and open to the public, no ticket required.

A Theatre Arts Interdisciplinary Summer Workshop with experimental performances inspired by the University of Iowa Dada and Fluxus special collections.

This two-week August workshop takes the Fluxus event score as a starting point for developing a happening with site-specific performance and live video projected onto the facade of the E.C. Mabie Theatre at the University of Iowa Theatre Building.

Working with visiting artist Nica Ross, Associate Professor of Video and Media Design at Carnegie Mellon University, and co-lead by Daniel Fine, Associate Professor of Digital Media in Performance at the University of Iowa, students will research and engage materials from the University of Iowa’s renowned Fluxus and Dada collections.

The workshop explores how Dada’s strategies of chance, collage, interruption, absurdity, and anti-performance directly informed Fluxus approaches to the event score, participatory action, and everyday performance. Participants will investigate the score not as a script for representation, but as a minimal structure for generating a series of video machine performances.

Fluxus transformed ordinary actions into performative systems:

• a gesture,

• an instruction,

• a delay,

• a repetition,

• a rule.

This workshop extends those methods into responsive media environments. Participants will use live performance, live video, improvisation, projection mapping, feedback systems, video collage, audience participation, lo-fi technologies, spatial choreography, and collective image production to collaboratively create a public happening for machines, bodies, cameras, architectures, and audiences.

Production Team:
Nica Ross, Director of the Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry and Associate Professor of Video and Media Design at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Drama
Daniel Fine, Associate Professor at University of Iowa in Theatre Arts, Dance, and Digital Arts
Emily Berkheimer, Digital Media Specialist for University of Iowa Performing Arts Production Unit
Bea Beaman **
Andres Castillo *
Jenna Davis **
Zach Douglas *
Pensee Ismael **
Ani Jilavyan **
Brennen Malone **
Embrey O'Leary **
Jessica Pfeifer *
Jasmine Pizano **
Marisa Rodriguez *
Raphael Thome **
Nazanin Vakili **
Lindsey Wildman +

*Undergraduate student.
**Graduate student.
+Theatre Arts alumni
UI Theatre is dedicated to providing hands-on theatre experience for both undergraduate and graduate students.