Gavin Butt, You Cannot Be Serious!: Gender Performance and Queer Authenticity  Performance has often been approached as a sign of non-serious or value-less activity in the 20th and 21st century. For instance, in speaking pejoratively of someone as 'theatrical', we can see how performance is sometimes associated with a lack of authenticity, in this case by implying that they are exaggerated or affected, 'too much' to be taken seriously.

Melanie Manchot, Artist's Presentation  Melanie Manchot will talk through a selection of recent works in relation to a performative approach to photography and portraiture. She will discuss her use of cameras, both moving and still, as tools to create encounters on the threshold between staged and documentary practice. Many of these works are made with strangers, often in public spaces, and aim to articulate relationships between the individual and collective space.

Kathy Battista, Women Artists, Pain and Self-Portraiture  Kathy Battista explores how women artists have used pain (both physical and emotional) as a medium. She considers three historical moments: Frida Kahlo’s works from the 1940s including Without Hope, 1945, Tree of Hope, Keep Firm, 1946, and The Broken Column, 1944; feminist artists Hannah Wilke and Jo Spence’s work from the late 1980s and early 1990s including Intra Venus (Wilke) 1993 and Narratives of Dis-ease (Spence) 1989; and Tracey Emin’s work from the late 1990s.

Gill Perry, Introduction to the Themes of the Day  Germaine Greer has described Kahlo as 'the first ever true performance artist'. Gill Perry considers this claim in relation to recent debates about the meanings of performance art, and in comparison with the activities of a later generation of women artists, including the work of Carolee Schneemann, Ana Mendieta and Hannah Wilke from the 1960s and 70s.

Steve Edwards, Nigel Warburton, Marko Daniel, Kathe Kollwitz, Frida Kahlo and Frances Morris, Plenary Discussion  At this study day leading curators and art historians discuss the relationship between exhibitions, museum collections and art history

Kathe Kollwitz and Frida Kahlo, The Guerrilla Girls  We're feminist masked avengers in the tradition of anonymous do-gooders like Robin Hood, Wonder Woman and Batman. How do we expose sexism, racism and corruption in politics, art, film and pop culture? With facts, humour and outrageous visuals. Our work has been passed around the world by our tireless supporters.

Gill Perry, Discussion  This video recording is the discussion, the final part of the Tate Modern study day Identity and Performativity

Gavin Butt, Just a Camp laugh? David Hoyle's 'Magazine'  In this presentation Gavin Butt considers the place of the sincere speech act within the discourse of contemporary politics and performance. He is particularly concerned to highlight the ways in which such forms of speech may often 'misfire', either as we fail to believe in them or as they leave us cold.

Lara Perry, The substance of the subject: representing identity in contemporary portraiture  Many of the starkest examples of 'performed' gender in contemporary art have been delivered through the genre of portraiture: the works of Cindy Sherman and Yasumasa Morimura can certainly be understood to work in this context.

Gilda Williams, Factory Girls and Superstars: Warhol's Women in the 1960s  Gilda Williams discusses the construction of women's identity in Warhol's Factory, which, despite being often described as a 'boy's club’, counted numerous fascinating, often beautiful women among its regulars, including Jane Holzer, Edie Sedgwick, Brigid Berlin, Ultra Violet, Dorothy Dean, Mary Woronov, Viva and innumerable others.