Documentary Workshop- Fall 2023

In the run-up to the 2020 presidential elections, this course is an opportunity to tackle some of the most pressing questions of our current political moment. What constitutes the right to vote? Who gets to speak and how? What does coercion mean in an era of widespread data points? What ways does visibility in media, on the streets, or on stage, influence the democratic process? From all these questions, it is difficult to separate performance from democracy. Considering each term within its own disciplinary debates and methods, we will focus on the intersections where politicians perform as actors, where the vote is linked to embodiment, the script of a campaign speech taps into social drama, and where affect-feelings work on the hearts and minds of voters. What might performance tell us about the ideals and problems we currently face in our political systems? How might we experiment through performance to explore existing and new forms of democratic practice and governance?