Clifford Owens (right, standing) will feature in this project by UNC Professor John Bowles. During a visit to UNC in fall 2009, Owens took photographs to develop a piece for Bowles's archive of African-American performance art.









Wilson Library, Pleasants Family Assembly Room
Tuesday, 1:00 to 5:00 p.m.
Wednesday, 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Thursday, 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Free and open to the public

Principal Investigator
John Bowles, Art History, UNC

Performance Artist
Clifford Owens

Collaborators
Bowles' graduate student seminar

Project Description
In fall 2009, performance artist Clifford Owens visited UNC-Chapel Hill for two weeks to meet with students, work with Bowles’ graduate seminar and develop a performance to debut. This performance included a live, interactive Web component that will be archived as part of a new performance art archive that Bowles and his team of graduate students are creating.

Click here for news about Owens's visit to UNC on the College of Arts and Sciences Web site.
Click here to read an article on Owens's visit from the Independent Weekly.

Bowles and his research team will develop a Web site with three components:

• An historical archive of African-American performance art. The Web site is designed to raise questions about the kinds of work that archives enable, providing a platform for dialogue and debate among students, artists and scholars. It will be structured as a wiki that can be continually modified by its users. Once the site is made public, users will be able to contribute in two ways: passively, when Google Analytics or a similar application provides data tracking their use of the site, and actively, when presented with opportunities to contribute to and comment on site content.
• Live interactive Web component. Clifford Owens’ debut performance will be archived as a part of the site.
• Record the process of production. Bowles and his team will archive the process of conducting the seminar, sharing research through group work and collaboratively creating the Web site and the new performance. They will also track and present data regarding how the Web site is subsequently used and by whom.

This Web site will be an online exhibition with the capacity to support a variety of media, from texts and photographs to audio, video and Web-based artworks.

John Bowles will be on hand to discuss his work Friday from 9:00 to 9:30 a.m.