Sam Sloan is a scholar/artist working at the intersections of Performance Studies and New Media.
Originally from the New Orleans area, with a B.S. in Communication Studies and Psychology from Louisiana State University, Sam is currently working on a PhD in the Speech Communications Department at Southern Illinois University, with a strong emphasis on Performance Studies.
Some current interests are REMIX CULTURE, Critical Performance Scholarship and Praxis, Digital Performance, New Media Production, The Digital Humanities, Performance Art, Generative Art, Disability Studies, Cognitive Psychology, Sensory and Perception Research, Avant Garde Film, Cultural Studies, and Cyberculture.
Current Projects:
Shows Directing:
Try This @ Home: An Experiment in Remix Culture,
Technical Assistant: Nichole Nicholson
Borrowing, sampling, memes, Hip Hop, collage, bricolage, and mash-up! This show is an investigation of the aesthetic practice of remix culture in the digital age. The cast, along with contributing artists, will collectively explore the artistic, ethical, and legal issues of what it means to be (re)producing and (re)performing culture at a time when practices of remix are both highly popular and highly debated.
Recently Performed at Georgia College State University &
Looking to Travel:
Meme-ology Lessons 1 & 2:,
Co-performer: Nichole Nicholson
running time: 1 hr.
A two-part performance art piece which explores the relationship between digital media/culture and
embodiment in terms of the collaborative and rhizomatic production of internet memes (viral jokes, phrases, images, or videos)
which are spread peer-to-peer via digital technologies.
Our performance uses mediated and “live” movement performance to engage
with this phenomenon, matching form and content via remix aesthetics
and surrealist juxtaposition. The first part of the performance is
meant primarily as an introduction to the form and language; the
second part attempts to engage with and respond to
internet memes that participate in larger oppressive discourses.
If you are interested in bringing this to your Performance Studies program, just send us a message with the form on the "About" page.
We just need a projector, an audience, a theatre, and a time, and we'll provide the performance.
Shows Performing:
Little Miss Grotesque,
as Jan Vandercamp
Written and Directed by Andrea Baldwin
Assistant Direction by Diana Woodhouse
Little Miss Grotesque explores the construction of norms for female bodies in theory of child beauty pageants. Using the theoretical background of Bakhtin’s grotesque to explore the hyperexteded disciplining of children’s bodies for display, this show takes an intertextual ride through how we view and explore parental relationships, the “grooming” of children, and what it takes to “build confidence” in children. Don’t be ugly . . .
