Beyond Jewellery:Performing the Body

10am-5pm, 17 March 2016 at the Parkside Gallery, Birmingham City University

6pm – 8pm flockOmania2 performance

The Beyond Jewellery symposium coincides with flockOmania2, an exhibition and live performance event which crosses boundaries between jewellery and dance. Located within the field of contemporary art jewellery, this symposium explores the relationships between sculptural objects, the body and performance. In doing so, Beyond Jewellery offers a space to interrogate and reflect upon interdisciplinary projects interested in the body as a meeting place or nexus for collaboration. With a keynote from artist, researcher and body-centric sculptor, Di Mainstone, and talks spanning disciplines from textiles, dance, jewellery to sound and film, the point at which the themes of body, object and performance intersect are explored from myriad angles.

Speakers include:

• Di Mainstone
• Caroline Broadhead and Angela Woodhouse
• Dr Natalie Garret Brown and Zoe Robertson
• Fo Hamblin
• Jessa Fairbrother
• Nikki Pugh
• Noam Ben-Jacov
• Michelle Jessop
• John Moore
• Katrin Spranger
• Julia Schuster

Panels are chaired by:

Prof Sarah Whatley (Coventry University), Prof Jill Journeau (Coventry University), Prof Jivan Astfalck (Birmingham City University)

Following the Symposium, the audience is invited to join the flockOmania team in the Parkside Gallery, for an improvised durational performance and private view to celebrate this latest stop on flockOmania’s world tour. The exhibition showcases wearable objects which explore the relationship between jewellery, dance and performance. It was created by Zoe Robertson in response to a collaborative relationship with dance artists Dr Natalie Garrett Brown and Amy Voris. Their background in contemporary dance, movement improvisation and site based performance provided the catalyst for this body of work. The resulting jewellery is theatrically-sized to emphasise and explore themes relating to the scale and movement of the body. flockOmania2 will be hosted at the Parkside Gallery, Birmingham City University from Monday 22nd February to Friday 1st April 2016.

The flockOmania2 performance and private view begins at 6pm – 8pm and entry is free.

Please join us.

PLEASE NOTE: The Beyond Jewellery symposium will be held at Birmingham City University, The Parkside Building, 5 Cardigan Street, Birmingham, B4 7BD. This will not take place at the School of Jewellery.

It is organised in conjunction with the School of Jewellery (Faculty of Arts Design and Media, Birmingham City University) and the Centre for Dance Research (C-DaRE, Coventry University). Convened by Zoe Roberson and Sian Hindle (School of Jewellery) and Dr Natalie Garrett Brown (C-DaRE).

Embodied Knowledge: Training & Performance Practice

10, 11 June 2016
Lincoln School of Fine and Performing Arts

KEYNOTE:
Prof Erika Fischer-Lichte, Free University of Berlin, Germany
Topic: The Body as Site of Interweaving Performance Cultures: Between Being a Body and Having a Body

CALL FOR PAPERS:
The aim of the conference is to explore the terrain of embodied knowledge of Asian performance, specifically the ways in which distinctively different concepts and methods of practice inform and shape the idea of ‘performance’ as a critical paradigm. It is also the focus of the conference to reexamine and reevaluate the ways in which the embodied knowledge of Asian performance informs the development of intercultural theory, training methods and production practices for the last many decades.

Asian performance offers a rich vocabulary of concepts and methodologies of practices enabling a complex and multilayered psychophysical ‘process’ in which the ‘technique’ becomes the ‘knowledge’ of the body. ‘Technique’ gains the status of ‘knowledge’ in Asian performance. The body becomes an instrument in the hand of its user and the performance knowledge is transmitted through the practical mastery of the practice of the body. The technique shapes and defines the form of practice and this practice, in turn, is embedded in the techniques of the body. The knowledge of the body is evoked and delivered in performance through a series of gestures, movements, utterances, physical modulations and voice. The performer uses a series of motion trajectories and mental manoeuvres in this process. What is this ‘process’ of technique becoming the knowledge of the flesh and what are the psychophysical dynamics involved in this ‘process’? What do we learn from Asian performance about this embodied knowledge in performance practice and how do we understand and theorise this ‘process’ of the sensuous scholarship of the body across different spatialities and temporalities? Training methods in Asian theatre insist upon relentless repetitions to stabilise the learning of specific bodily techniques. The body remembers and repeats all the limb movements and their numbers mechanically while taking the body out of its restrictive principles of practice. Similarly, Asian performance traditions offer a dynamic body relationship and alternative performance modes that are syncretic and multi-generic, integrating dance, music, text, decorative and symbolic colour coding and much more. This is the wider context in which the convenors of this conference invite proposals for papers, workshops, lecture demonstrations or poster presentations on the topics including, but not limited to, these:
•Choreography and movement;
•Training: Concepts, methods, pedagogy and artistic practices;
•Psychophysical processes: technique, repetition and physical transformation;
•Eclecticism, fusion and the problems of Intercultural paradigm;
•The future of intercultural exchange in the contemporary Asian/Western/ cyber cultural settings;
•Politics of colour, race and ethnicity;
•Knowing through the body/thinking through the body;
•Women in Asian theatre: Gender, sexual and trance-gender identities;
•The body: techniques, terminologies and practices;
•Ritual and play.
Please submit an abstract proposal (not more than 350 words) and a 200 word biographical note to the co-directors of the conference: Dr Sreenath Nair: snair@lincoln.ac.uk and Dr Arya Madhavan: amadhavan@lincoln.ac.uk
Selected papers will be published in a special edited volume. Details to be announced soon.

DEADLINE FOR PROPOSALS: 15 March 2016
CONFIRMATIONS: 1 April 2016

Material Memories: Bodies and Art

Tuesday 15^th March, 12-1pm

University House 3, Bishop Otter Campus, University of Chichester

Presenters:

Dr Claire Jones, University of Birmingham

Dr Shirley Chubb, University of Chichester

Rachel Johnston, University of Chichester

Chair: Ashleigh Griffith, Doctoral candidate, University of Chichester

10am-5pm, 17 March 2016 at the Parkside Gallery, Birmingham City University

The Beyond Jewellery symposium coincides with flockOmania2, an exhibition and live performance event which crosses boundaries between jewellery and dance. Located within the field of contemporary art jewellery, this symposium explores the relationships between sculptural objects, the body and performance.

Further information available here: http://flockomania.com/beyond-jewellery/

Booking available here:  https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/beyond-jewelleryperforming-the-body-tickets-21550728810?ref=eweb

EMBODIED KNOWLEDGE: TRAINING & PERFORMANCE

10, 11 June 2016
Lincoln School of Fine and Performing Arts

KEYNOTE
Prof Erika Fischer-Lichte, Free University of Berlin, Germany
Topic: The Body as Site of Interweaving Performance Cultures: Between Being a Body and Having a Body

CALL FOR PAPERS:
The aim of the conference is to explore the terrain of embodied knowledge of Asian performance, specifically the ways in which distinctively different concepts and methods of practice inform and shape the idea of ‘performance’ as a critical paradigm. It is also the focus of the conference to reexamine and reevaluate the ways in which the embodied knowledge of Asian performance informs the development of intercultural theory, training methods and production practices for the last many decades.

Asian performance offers a rich vocabulary of concepts and methodologies of practices enabling a complex and multilayered psychophysical ‘process’ in which the ‘technique’ becomes the ‘knowledge’ of the body. ‘Technique’ gains the status of ‘knowledge’ in Asian performance. The body becomes an instrument in the hand of its user and the performance knowledge is transmitted through the practical mastery of the practice of the body. The technique shapes and defines the form of practice and this practice, in turn, is embedded in the techniques of the body. The knowledge of the body is evoked and delivered in performance through a series of gestures, movements, utterances, physical modulations and voice. The performer uses a series of motion trajectories and mental manoeuvres in this process. What is this ‘process’ of technique becoming the knowledge of the flesh and what are the psychophysical dynamics involved in this ‘process’? What do we learn from Asian performance about this embodied knowledge in performance practice and how do we understand and theorise this ‘process’ of the sensuous scholarship of the body across different spatialities and temporalities? Training methods in Asian theatre insist upon relentless repetitions to stabilise the learning of specific bodily techniques. The body remembers and repeats all the limb movements and their numbers mechanically while taking the body out of its restrictive principles of practice. Similarly, Asian performance traditions offer a dynamic body relationship and alternative performance modes that are syncretic and multi-generic, integrating dance, music, text, decorative and symbolic colour coding and much more. This is the wider context in which the convenors of this conference invite proposals for papers, workshops, lecture demonstrations or poster presentations on the topics including, but not limited to, these:

•Choreography and movement;
•Training: Concepts, methods, pedagogy and artistic practices;
•Psychophysical processes: technique, repetition and physical transformation;
•Eclecticism, fusion and the problems of Intercultural paradigm;
•The future of intercultural exchange in the contemporary Asian/Western/ cyber cultural settings;
•Politics of colour, race and ethnicity;
•Knowing through the body/thinking through the body;
•Women in Asian theatre: Gender, sexual and trance-gender identities;
•The body: techniques, terminologies and practices;
•Ritual and play

Please submit an abstract proposal (not more than 350 words) and a 200 word biographical note to the co-directors of the conference: Dr Sreenath Nair: snair@lincoln.ac.uk and Dr Arya Madhavan: amadhavan@lincoln.ac.uk
Selected papers will be published in a special edited volume. Details to be announced soon.

DEADLINE FOR PROPOSALS: 15 March 2016
CONFIRMATIONS: 1 April 2016

Thursday March 17^th 2016

Birmingham City University

ABOUT: the CALL OUT

We invite speakers to take part in the Beyond Jewellery symposium to coincide with the exhibition flockOmania², an exhibition and live performance event which crosses boundaries between jewellery and dance (please see further info below).  Located within the field of contemporary art jewellery and with a keynote presentation from Di Mainstone, this symposium explores the relationships between sculptural objects, the body and performance.  In doing so, Beyond Jewellery offers a space to interrogate and reflect upon interdisciplinary projects interested in the body as a meeting place or nexus for collaboration.

Proposal submissions might include (but are not limited to) the following themes:

• OBJECTS – embodied objects, wearable objects in motion and in performance, artefact as performance, experiments with scale and materiality
• BODY – notions of the post-human body, inter-subjectivity in performance, the mediated body and haptic knowing
• COLLABORATION – creative partnerships, co-creating and emerging process orientated making practices
• BOUNDARIES – interdisciplinary adventures, blurring boundaries and disciplinary rule-breaking
• PERFORMANCE – composing the object, activating objects through performance, sonic landscapes, sites of sensorial investigation and temporal relationships
• AUDIENCE – engagement and interaction, performative making, playful encounters and audience as co-creators

The symposium will offer a space for discussion, engagement, debate and experimentation, and aims to initiate dialogue around the role of the body in creative practice. We invite proposals from scholars, artists and research students in a range of modes and formats including: 20 minute papers, curated panels, artists talks, film, performance lectures, 10 min lightning talks, and performative interventions.

HOW TO APPLY

The Beyond Jewellery symposium will be held at Birmingham City University, The Parkside Building, 5 Cardigan Street, Birmingham, B4 7BD. It is organised in conjunction with the School of Jewellery (Faculty of Arts Design and Media, Birmingham City University) and the Centre for Dance Research (C-DaRE, Coventry University).  Convened by Zoe Roberson and Sian Hindle (School of Jewellery) and Dr Natalie Garrett Brown (C-DaRE).

ABOUT: Di Mainstone

The New York Times has featured Di Mainstone as ‘one of a new generation of visionaries’ in the international digital-arts scene.  Di is the founder of the widely acclaimed Human Harp Project, a collaborative instrument that transforms suspension bridges into giant harps.

Di’s sonic devices have been performed at home and abroad, most notably at The V&A, The Barbican, The National Portrait Gallery, Eyebeam NYC, The Brooklyn Bridge and the Swedish National Touring Theatre.  Each happening is unique, revealing openings for audience and performer encounters.  Her work has been featured in media outlets such as BBC World Service, BBC News, New Yorker, New York Times, Time Out, Dezeen and The Observer. Di’s work can also be seen in the films which she writes and directs. Her studio is found up a windy stairway, amidst the reclaimed tube trains that roost on top of Shoreditch’s Village Underground, where her sculptural adornments are brought to life with dancers, musicians and scientists.  For more information please visit www.dimainstone.com

ABOUT: flockOmania²

flockOmania² will be hosted at the Parkside Gallery, Birmingham City University from Monday 22^nd February to Friday 1^st April 2016.  The exhibition showcases wearable objects which explore the relationship between jewellery, dance and performance. It was created by Zoe Robertson in response to a collaborative relationship with dance artists Dr Natalie Garrett Brown and Amy Voris.  Their background in contemporary dance, movement improvisation and site based performance provided the catalyst for this body of work.  The resulting jewellery is theatrically-sized to emphasise and explore themes relating to the scale and movement of the body.  flockOmania² challenges the traditional conventions of jewellery display: here, the work hangs freely in the space rather than being contained by a glass cabinet, creating an immersive environment encouraging performativity, audience interaction and response.  The space is seen as a laboratory of making in which the dance artists improvise movement and the audience is invited to interact, touch, play, wear, explore and respond.  For further information please visit www.flockomania.com