Frances Charteris
Born in Paris, of British parents, Frances Charteris has lived more than half her life in the USA. Her work involves portraiture in photographic and mixed media installations that concern issues of roots, connection and (dis)placement. Frances has shown most recently in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Frances Charteris teaches Performance and Installation and Writing in the Visual Arts at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She also leads an Art History summer program in Paris, France, where she was born.
Workshop Overview
The workshop includes the presentation of works as well as a mixed mediaperformance fragment. It would end with works by participants.
Frances will lead the workshop employing techniques she uses in her course, Performance & Installation, at the University of Colorado. The techniques are also a basis for performance productions with FAROUCHE, a troupe of loosely affiliated artists, musicians, dancers and poets based in Colorado. Exercises would be drawn from Grotowski, Towards a Poor Theater, Ruth Zaporah’s Action Theater: The Improvisation of Presence, and Augusto Boal’s, Theater of the Oppressed as well as from her own repertory and DADA and Surrealist theories that subvert fixity and standard expectations. Basis of her practice formed by visual art more than theater.
The purpose of the workshop and presentation is to draw out an artist’s response to urgency of present moment by means of invention and play in a space of interrogation and experiment. Video, still cameras, projectors and laptops could be involved depending on availability and on proclivities of participants.
At the close of the workshop, participants will produce a series of short works that would include collaborative pieces as well as solos; Frances will show works from events she has directed and produced that demonstrate range of what can occur as a result of interactive improvisation; Frances will also do a performance fragment from her piece, Chore Song.
