Convened by Elise Morrison and Marta Jovanović.
On October 1 at the MAXXI Museum, students from the RUFA Fine Arts Department and Yale University will invite the audience to question power, desire, and surveillance through their performances.
Opening: Wednesday, 1 October, 5:00 PM – MAXXI, National Museum of 21st Century Arts. Free admission.
Performance Cluster is RUFA’s annual event dedicated to performance art, where students present works that investigate the body, the mind, and the physical and conceptual spaces around us. Rooted in lived experience—through the body, thought, and time—performance art here becomes an open laboratory of research and experimentation, guided by artist and professor Marta Jovanović. Over the years, Performance Cluster has grown into one of the most significant events of the RUFA Visual Arts Department.
Discipline / Desire / Surveillance – The 2025 Edition
This year’s edition is presented in collaboration with Yale University and draws inspiration from Elise Morrison’s book Discipline and Desire: Surveillance Technologies in Performance Art. In her work, Morrison examines how surveillance technologies—from drones and closed-circuit cameras to facial recognition—shape communication, entertainment, and control in contemporary society. While these tools are often seen as symbols of power and discipline, they can also be subverted, turned into instruments for “looking back” at power itself.
Nine international women performance artists—Vanshika Agrawal, Sofia Arredondo, Anna Fischnaller, Alice Kasdan, Abigail Murphy, Bianca Polakova, Kateryna Sopielkina, Nadia Vallino, and Julia Vasconcelos—will explore these tensions. How can artists destabilise and reimagine the dominant structures of discipline and desire? How might surveillance technologies become tools of two-way communication instead of unilateral control?
Through their actions—suspended between risk and freedom—these women transform the very technologies that monitor us into living artistic instruments, leaving the audience to wonder: who is watching whom?
Convened by:
Elise Morrison — Associate Professor at Yale University
Marta Jovanović — Performance Artist and Professor at RUFA
Head of Production:
Ada Uygan — Multimedia Artist and Exhibit Designer
Programme of Performances
VANSHIKA AGRAWAL
SU, RISPONDI, AMORE
Dates: October 1
Duration: 30 minutes
Time: 18:00
SOFIA ARREDONDO
Are You Sure You Want to Delete This?
Date: October 1
Duration: 2 hours
Time: 17:00
BIANCA POLAKOVA
Nibble Nibble Gnaw
Date: 1-5 October
Schedule: Daily 11am – 1pm, 2pm – 7pm
October 1: 17:00-19:30 (opening day)
October 2: 11:00-13:00 (only)
KATERYNA SOPIELKINA
FIGHT OF MODERNITY
Dates: October 1-5
Schedule: Daily 11:00-13:00, 14:00-19:00
October 1: 17:00-19:30 (opening day)
NADIA VALLINO
Chiudo gli occhi per vivere,
per uccidere anche
Date: October 1
Duration: 15-20 minutes
Time: 18:30
JULIA VASCONCELOS
Unseen
Date: October 1
Duration: 1 hour 30 minutes
Time: 17:30
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Installations (On View Throughout the Exhibition):
ANNA FISCHNALLER
211.648/215.072
An action captured through a weather cam somewhere in the Alps.
ALICE KASDAN
Our Child Your Self
My fetus within my uterus, my body within itself. Visitors take part in the constant surveillance that every woman is under.
ABIGAIL MURPHY
Inside Blue
This work examines AI as a companion, confidant, friend, and even obsession.