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The Centre for Contemporary and Digital Performance

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Performance Research Seminar Series

Fall 2012

School of Arts - Brunel University - London

The public is invited to participate in this series of encounters, lectures, screenings, physical and new media workshops and discussions, focussed on new thinking in performance practices,new medi arts, technologies, physical and digital/scientific creativity, and cultural production.

For more information contact 01895 267 343 .........Admission free.......... Location: Cleveland Rd, Uxbridge, Middlesex, UB8 3PH

Research Seminar on Dance TECH TV LIVE

DAP-lab.TV

Welcome to this fall's research seminar series at the Centre for Contemporary and Digital Performance. This fall we will focus on how praxis and theory in performance and theatre shifts as they are informed, challenged and or altered by other disciplines, processes and or art forms.

 

 

Wednesday, Wednesday October 17, 2012

Performance Research Seminar

GB048 Drama Studio 16:oo

Scott deLahunta(c) Photo Amin Weber

Scott deLahunta

(Project Leader, Motion Bank, William Forsythe Company)

"Choreographic Objects: artefacts and traces of physical intelligence "

 

This talk will focus on the idea of a growing collection of self-determined reflections on dance practice being published by choreographers in a variety of formats. Often working in collaboration with researchers, editors and designers, these heterogeneous publication projects make use of text, moving image and more open-ended digital tools and platforms. Many of these projects are either newly available or are in the process of development. They point towards the artist's role in developing alternative forms of documenting, analyzing, notating and archiving contemporary dance.

Scott deLahunta has worked as writer, researcher and organiser on a range of international projects bringing performing arts with a focus on choreography into conjunction with other disciplines and practices. He is currently Senior Research Fellow Coventry University/ R-Research Director, Wayne McGregor|Random Dance and Project Leader Motion Bank/ The Forsythe Company.

http://www.sdela.dds.nl/

 

Wednesday, November7, 2012

Performance Research Seminar

GB048 Drama Studio 16:oo-17:30 pm

Susan Broadhurst

(Professor of Performance & Technology, Brunel University)

"Einstein on the Beach: A Study in Temporality"

In this paper I seek to examine and analyse the sense of duration induced by performances of Einstein on the Beach, and the entailed sense of time which its internal structure creates. I initially sketch out the stylistic context and artistic intentions of this work's creators, Glass and Wilson, and I briefly describe the process of its creation. Certain features of this process indicate how the work may be interpreted. Having cited the creators' thoughts on structure and temporality, I address directly aspects of Einstein's temporal effects, comparing it to works of similar lengths. I give the briefest synopsis of its staging and motifs. I then outline three kinds of devices which seem to inform our temporal sense of this work as spectators. In the final section I invoke two ideas which serve as analogies to help characterise this work's overall effect on us: Heidegger's notion of the "hermeneutic circle" and, more speculatively, Nietzsche's "theory" of Eternal Recurrence.

Susan Broadhurst is a writer and performance practitioner, and Professor of Performance and Technology in the School of Arts, Brunel University, London. She has published widely in the area of experimental performance and is Series co-editor for Palgrave's Studies in Performance and Technology. She is also co-editor of the online journal Body, Space & Technology.

 

 

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Performance Research Seminar

GB048 Drama Studio 16:oo-17:30 pm

Videostill from "IVF14. Our Experience-Embryo Transfer" by Nathalie Soelmark

Nathalie Soelmark

(Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Southern Denmark)

"Biotechnological intervention in the body "

This presentation will offer insight into how reproductively challenged perform their experience with biotechnology on YouTube and includes the screening of 2 video clips from YouTube (7-10 minutes). In what follows I am highlighting how these performances on YouTube display active and critically engaged individuals, in contrast to commonly held assumptions about biotechnology and the media embedding the autonomous individual, in perceptions of the natural body not as an ideal but an appreciation of, and instance on a shared materiality. New reproduction technology may very well erode what we believe as a shared, common and general being in relation- human and human body- with its transparent biotechnological alterations of just that sensus communis. But I argue, that mediations on YouTube of experience with new reproduction technology and the biomedical perception of the body as object and subject as somatic themselves function as an individual expression of core concern with and emotional involvement in consequences of biotechnological intervention in the body e.g. dehumanization.

 

Nathalie W. Soelmark is a Ph.D. fellow at the Institute of Literature, Media, and Cultural Studies, University of Southern Denmark. Her research project; Transformation of Kinship: Mediated experiences of body, technology and kinship is a cultural study of connections between contemporary perceptions of the body and media-, bio-, and reproduction technology with a special focus on the consequences of these connections for the concept of kinship. Nathalie W. Soelmark has a Master in Culture and Communication from Southern University of Denmark.

 

 

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Performance Research Seminar

GB048 Drama Studio 16:oo-17:30 pm

Jayne Wilton

(Leverhulme Fellow & Brunel School of Engineering and Design Artist in Residence)

"Drawing Breath"

Jayne Wilton is currently Artist in Residence at the School of Engineering and Design, Brunel University. She graduated with an MA from The Slade School of Fine Art in 2010. Investigating transient processes in relation to human experience, her work currently focuses on the poignancy of the human breath, its fragility and its resilience. Her work often focuses on making visible the invisible and in highlighting the depths and complexities of our exchange with our environment. In attempting to capture a trace of the breath, she attempts to make permanent the fragile and ephemeral.

 

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Winter 2013

 

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Performance Research Seminar

GB048 Drama Studio 16:oo-17:30 pm

Photo: OCNM Archive / Martin Popel r

Daniel Ploeger

(performance artist, Lecturer in Performance Technologies, Brunel University)

 

"Thinking Critical/Looking Sexy"

Cultural theorist Rob Cover (2003) has suggested that the unstable character of relational contexts in postmodern culture results in all nudity potentially signifying sexuality. Accordingly, I suggest that the presentation of naked bodies in contemporary performance art is always likely to be perceived as sexual. In addition, I observe that many body artists perform transgressive actions that appear to reject normative body culture, but at the same time demonstrate a fascination with the very mainstream body-beautiful ideals their actions seem to challenge; their bodies as well as their self-representation in the media often reveal a careful maintenance of their bodies through exercise regimes and other cosmetic endeavors in accordance with cultural norms. In this presentation, I propose an approach that seeks to actively provoke the sexualization of the performer's body (thus accommodating fascinations with normative bodily regimes), whilst at the same time undermining this reading by equally heightening cues that suggest a medical, commodified and artistic reading of the body.

Dani Ploeger is an artist and theorist, living and working in London and Berlin. Heralded in the press as the 'Jimi Hendrix of the sphincter', Dani's performance installations often involve cheap readily available medical and consumer technologies and explore themes around the technologized body, sexuality and vanity. His artwork has been featured in venues such as the Museum of Contemporary Art Basel, Experimental Intermedia in New York, para/site art space in Hong Kong and KipVis in Vlissingen, Netherlands. His writing in the field of digital art and cultural studies has been published in the International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media and the Body, Space and Technology Journal , among others. He is also a permanent contributor to The Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory (Oxford University Press). Dani is a studio artist at ]performance s p a c e[ in London. After holding a position as Lecturer in Performing Arts at De Montfort University in Leicester, he was appointed as Lecturer in Theatre and Digital Arts at Brunel University London in 2012.

 

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Performance Research Seminar

GB048 Drama Studio 16:oo-17:30 pm

Robin Nelson (Director of Research, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London, with respondents: Stelarc, Johannes Birringer

"From Practitioner to Practitioner-Researcher"

Dani Prof. Robin Nelson's presentation, "From Practitioner to Practitioner-Researcher", will briefly summarize the state of play in PaR nationally and worldwide, noting resistances (for example, in the USA and continental Europe). The body of the presentation will address the adjustments a practitioner needs to make to undertake research as understood in "the academy" alongside adjustments the PaR initiative has drawn the academy to make to accommodate it (at least in the UK). The latter involves shifts in what is understood by ”knowledge” and “knowing” and its effective sharing across the university sector. I move towards the epistemological-methodological model I have developed in arguing (in my forthcoming book) that PaR is a new methodology - an extension of the spectrum of research methodologies in the academy.

Dani Robin Nelson is Professor of Theatre and Intermedial Performance and Director of Research at the University of London, Royal Central School, and an Emeritus Professor of Manchester Metropolitan University. He has published widely on the performing arts and media and on “practice as research”. He is a co-founding editor of Critical Studies in Television, for which he guest co-edited a special issue on Archiving (5/2, November 2010). Recent books include: (co-edited with Bay-Cheng, S et al) Mapping Intermediality in Performance (Amsterdam University Press, 2010); State of Play: contemporary “high-end” TV drama (Manchester University Press; 2007); Stephen Poliakoff: on stage and screen (Methuen Drama, 2011). Prof. Nelson has just completed Practice as Research in the Arts (Palgrave, Spring 2013).

For a discussion of Practice as Research issues, Stelarc and Johannes Birringer will join Mr Nelson in a round table debate, followed by Q and A.

 

 

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Performance Research Seminar

GB048 Drama Studio 16:oo-17:30 pm

Blue Remix

 Yann Marussisch

"An Experience of Immobility"

 

In this presentation, Yann Marussich will discuss his performance work and artistic experiments since 2000. Whilst giving a chronological overview of the development of his work, he will elaborate on the methodologies underpinning his projects. Taking dance and body art as a starting point, Marussich has developed a unique approach to performance making which is based on presenting the body in a way that combines an appearance of immobility with micro movements.

Dani Yann Marussich is a Swiss contemporary dance practitioner and performance artist. Since 1989, his choreography and performances have been presented all over the world. In 2001, Yann choreographed Bleu Provisoire, his first totally motionless piece. Since then, his work has increasingly focused on introspection, exploring the control of stillness while placing his body in direct contact with diverse outside factors. In 2008, his work Blue Remix was awarded a Prix Ars Electronica Award of Distinction, one of the most important prizes in the field of art and technology. During the 2010-11 season, Yann was an associate artist at the Grütli Theater and from 1993 to 2000, he was the director of the Théâtre de l’Usine in Geneva, where he created a program almost exclusively composed of contemporary dance and new forms of expression. Yann Marussich is supported by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, and the City and Canton of Geneva.

http://www.yannmarussich.ch

 

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Performance Research Seminar

GB048 Drama Studio 16:oo-17:30 pm

 Irini Papadimitriou (V & A / Watermans Art Centre) / Mark Garrett (Furtherfield)

Curating Performance and New Media Art

The guests will discuss curating new media practices as ways of creating /opening up new 'spaces' (platforms) of collaboration and encounter, exchange of ideas with audiences. Work at the intersections of art, science, technology challenge institutions and curators, so can we invent new ways or develop existing models or presenting new media wor, and this of course also includes digital performance.

Irini Papadimitriou is part of the Digital Programmes Team at the V&A, mainly responsible for the monthly Digital Futures and Digital Drop-in programmes where artists/designers/technologists are invited to share work and research with fellow professionals and the public with a particular focus on processes and work in progress rather than finished work. She also curates the annual Digital Design Weekend, a weekend of events during the London Design Festival at the V&A, including interactive installations, talks and performances, hacking and tinkering projects, workshops and more. Irini is also the Head of New Media Arts Development at Watermans Arts Centre in West London, a space with a long history and commitment to presenting innovative work as well as supporting artists working with technology.

Marc Garrett is an artist, writer, curator and activist. Co-founder of Furtherfield with artist, writer and curator Ruth Catlow, an online community for art, technology and social change since 1997; now also a public gallery in the heart of Finsbury Park, London. Garrett has Co-curated many contemporary Media Arts exhibitions, projects nationally and internationally. Co-editor of Artists Re:Thinking Games (2010) and co-curator for Collaboration and Freedom - The World of Free and Open Source Art (2011) a collection for Arts Council England and the P2P Foundation. Was main editor and host of Furtherfield's critically acclaimed weekly broadcasts on UK's Resonance FM Radio, a series of hour long live interviews with people working at the edge of contemporary practices in art, technology & social change (2010-11). Main editor of Furtherfield for reviews, articles and interviews. Currently researching a Media Art history Phd at the University of London, Birkbeck College. Furtherfield website .

 

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Performance Research Seminar Coordinator: Johannes Birringer

All Research Seminars are co-produced with dance tech live TV and streamed online as well as archived.

 

In collaboration with http://www.livestream.com/dancetechttvlive

DAP-lab.TV

 

The Centre broadcasts selected Performance Research Seminars live from the Brunel Drama Studio - making them available to anyone in the world interested in the subject. Johannes Birringer and Marlon Barrios Solano are co-producing the talks and discussions as live webcasts webcast live on dance tech net TV . The partnership between the Centre and dance-techTV, is an experiment in collaborative video broadcasting (the channel is dedicated to interdisciplinary explorations of the performance of movement. The channel allows worldwide 24/7 linear broadcasting of selected programs, LIVE streaming and Video On-demand). This channel is powered by dance-tech.tv, and is enveloped within dance-tech.net, a donation based platform

 

 

ARTAUD FORUM 3

Artaud Performance Centre

23 March - 24 March , 2013

Artaud Forum III

Theatre and Resonant Politics

International Conference-Workshop on Theatre Praxis

 

details will be announced in early November and a call for papers and artworks will be issued by Dr Broderick Chow and Prof. Johannes Birringer [conference organizers]

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June 17-18, 2013

"Foreclosures" - Researching the Arts Conference

This edition of our annual PHD conference is co-organized by reseearh students from the University of Westminster and Brunel University and will be held on the campus of University of Westminster

 

details about this annual post-graduate research conference, call for submissions, and projected program and performances will be announced in November 2012

 

 

(c) 2012-13 The Centre for Contemporary and Digital Performance, Johannes Birringer (acting director)