OPEN CALL
PERFORMANCE CLUSTER 2025
DISCIPLINE / DESIRE / SURVEILLANCE
Convened by
Elise Morrison and Marta Jovanović
Students of Yale and RUFA universities presenting their works together at MAXXI Museum in Rome .
Performance Cluster, RUFA’s annual performance art event, will take place this year in collaboration with Yale University. It takes inspiration from Morrison’s book Discipline and Desire: Surveillance Technologies in Performance Art (University of Michigan Press, 2008).
Morrison describes the generative and resistant potentials of surveillance technologies as artistic tools in contemporary culture.
Morrison writes:
“The term surveillance society was first coined by sociologist Gary T. Marx in 1985 to describe the already rapidly increasing permeation of state and military technologies of surveillance into the social and cultural spheres of civilians around the world. As drones are introduced into environmental research, consumer delivery services, amateur and professional cinematography, border control, and local law enforcement departments, we are perched once again on a familiar razor’s edge. On one side, the risks of increased state discipline and corporate control threaten to cut into the privacy, personal freedoms, and information security of groups and individuals around the world; on the other, the benefits of increased efficiency, safety, communication, mobility, economic growth, and entertainment staunch these wounds.”
Systems of surveillance – including public CCTV cameras, facial recognition technologies, and predictive software – have come to structure daily communication, consumerism, and entertainment, as well as exert control in military and political systems. These widely available tools tend to favor existing structures of power, but surveillance technologies can also “look back” at “The Man” and “Big Brother.” How can artists and performers unsettle, reveal, and re-form dominant structures of discipline and desire using the same technologies that built them? How can surveillance technologies become tools of two-way communication rather than only one-way control?
We invite students and artists affiliated with Yale and RUFA universities to respond to this theme and title by submitting a short performance proposal including:
❯ Title and duration
❯ Concept (250 words)
❯ Technical description (250 words) and rider list
❯ A 1-minute video trailer of your performance that visually expresses your idea
❯ Render or sketch of the performance in space
Please submit your proposals by creating a folder with your last name and your first name on the following Google Drive.
DEADLINE: Midnight of July 15, 2025.
Late or incomplete proposals will not be considered.
TIMELINE:
AUGUST 1, 2025 – Selected projects announced
SEPTEMBER 28 and 29, 2025 – Workshop with Elise Morrison and project wrap up in person @RUFA
OCTOBER 1 to 5, 2025 – Performances and exhibition at MAXXI
