Two performance artists sat in front of a microwave outside the Spencer Museum of Art fighting over popcorn Thursday. A recording naming the symptoms of addiction played in the background.

The artists, Anson Stancliffe and Lauren Howard, were promoting Fluid Art 2008, a gallery of work from the “Performance Art” class. The exhibit is open in the Art and Design building gallery for the final day today.

Performance art brings together a variety of media such as music, dance and video. Stancliffe, Lawrence senior, said performance art was unique because one piece could never be repeated or sold.

“It’s more about memory,” Stancliffe said, “creating a moment for people that can never be redone perfectly.”

Fluid Art 2008 features 10 videos of the students’ strongest pieces from the semester and 10 music video projects. The videos play on a loop.

Amber Hansen, Alton, Iowa, graduate student and assistant for the class, said the students’ performances were more humorous this year because the performers approached their subjects in a more lighthearted manner.

One assignment for the class was to create a piece inspired by addiction. Stancliffe said the goal for his piece was to show the absurdity of addictions through an obsessive desire for popcorn.

Although Stancliffe and Howard performed the popcorn piece when the gallery opened, he chose to display his piece from the re-creation assignment. Stancliffe’s piece features a burial procession celebrating death.

Natale Collar, Kansas City, Kan., senior, submitted her project from the re-creation assignment for the gallery as well.

Collar’s piece features five photographs of her as different characters in a moment when their social identities change.

One of Collar’s photos focuses on a homicide and the idea that murderers will be remembered only as murderers, despite other aspects of their lives.

The music video project was new to Fluid Art this year. So Yeon Park, an assistant professor of art who taught the class, said she wanted to give the students an opportunity to learn the technical side of performance art through a medium the students were interested in.

Students chose a song for the assignment and then worked to make it their own with their voices and choreography. Park said the other goal of the music video project was to help improve students’ self-confidence and self-awareness.

Stancliffe wrote his own song for the project and said he was inspired by folk songs about men obsessed with women, such as a song called “Ohio River” about a man who killed his girlfriend because she wouldn’t marry him. His song tells the story of a man who murders his daughter after people come to take her away.

Park said performance art gave artists more freedom because they didn’t have to use traditional materials to convey their message.

With dance, the message comes through movement and with music it comes through sound. Park said performance art appealed to all five senses.

Fluid Art 2008 is open in the Art and Design building today from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

— Edited by Becka Cremer