OPEN TO ALL POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS /// EMAIL howlikealeaf@gmail.com

 How can better knowledge of an estuarine landscape stimulate innovative thinking? This TECHNE Conflux roundtable offers a fascinating opportunity to discuss what we can learn from close observation of the ebb and flow of the Thames estuary with its complex ecology. The special attributes of an estuary can also act as metaphors for addressing the importance of an ecological approach to art-making.

 The roundtable’s participants are independent art producer Ben Eastop and site-based performance artist Victoria Hunter. The roundtable asks how the daily flux of the estuary challenges us to reconsider concepts and actualities of human/environment relationships. TECHNE participants will have opportunities to contribute to the discussion from their different research backgrounds.

 Convened by Dr Libby Worth

 Refreshments provided

Ben Eastop

Ben Eastop is an independent art producer, artist and consultant specialising in commissioning and curating contemporary art beyond the art institution, working collaboratively with artists and others in the UK and internationally.

Through collaborative projects and his own practice he is working on a long-term enquiry into the social and political significance of the landscape and place mediated through art. He set up Difference Exchange (DE) with Tim Eastop and John Hartley, which seeks to creatively challenge orthodoxy to generate new understandings through art (www.differenceexchange.com).

DE worked with King's College London on Colm Cille's Spiral: six contemporary art and literature commissions across the UK and Ireland for Derry / Londonderry UK City of Culture 2013. 

Ben has extensive experience of commissioning art in the public realm that engages with academia, science, and health. He is also a part-time Regeneration Manager for arts and education charity ACAVA, developing studios for artists and creative practitioners.

Victoria Hunter

Her research is practice-based, productions include Beneath (2004) situated in the basement of the Bretton Hall mansion building, The Library Dances (2006) situated in the Leeds Central Library building, Project 3 (2007), a durational dance installation work and x3 (2010) a site-specific dance film, Bodies and Beaches for West Wittering beach on the South coast of England in June 2013.

Vicky's writing on site-dance has been published in Literary Geographies, New Theatre Quarterly, Performance Research, Choreographic Practices and Contemporary Theatre Review. Her edited volume Moving Sites: Investigating Site-Specific Dance Performance was published by Routledge in 2015 and she is co-author of (Re) Positioning Site-Dance (Intellect 2019) with Melanie Kloetzel (Canada) and Karen Barbour (New Zealand). Her forthcoming monograph publication Site, Dance and Body:Movement, Materials and Corporeal Engagement explores human-environment synergies through material intra-actions and is due for publication with Palgrave in early 2020.

https://www.chi.ac.uk/staff/dr-victoria-hunter

EMAIL // howlikealeaf@gmail.com to register

*MEET outside the main entrance to the TATE MODERN. We will then move to 11 Bedford Square, WC1B 3RE later in the day.

Taking place on the Thames Beach as well as at Bedford Square, the workshop will develop themes taken from the roundtable above and offer practical, creative activities in direct response to the Thames estuary environment exact location to be shared on sign-up). Working at the low tide we will respond to the ebb and flow of the river through direct observation and through individual and collaborative material and movement-based tasks.

Participants do not need to have experience of working with movement/dance or visual art as the activities will allow for a wide range of responses drawn from students own art practices. Two hours will be spent on the Thames beach focusing on multi-sense awareness of the space, with simple materials and collaboration. We will then travel to Bedford Square for a late lunch and sharing of experiences/discussion.

The workshop will be facilitated by movement practitioner Libby Worth and visual artist Julie Brixey-Williams with detailed instructions for the day sent to participants on sign-up.

Julie Brixey-Williams is a member of The Royal Society of Sculptors, whose work sits in the space between sculpture and performance. Much of her work is co-created with a specific place, exploring playfully through gesture and allowing time to listen as it “speaks meaningfully”, before responding through materials. She has been awarded several residencies including Craignish in Argyll, TheObservatory at Lymington (SPUD), Cove Park (winter opportunity programme), and The Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland (funded by the Leverhulme Trust). Works are held in collections including The Yale Center of British Art, Tate Gallery Artists’ Publication archive, National Art Library, Birmingham Museum of Art Library, Kingston University, University of Kent, National College of Art and Design in Ireland, The Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland, Laban Centre, and Queen Charlotte’s Hospital. Alongside her personal practice, she has longstanding collaborative relationships with performer Libby Worth and the multi-disciplinary collective, point and place. Julie is currently a PhD Researcher in Fine Art at the University of Reading. www.juliebrixey-williams.co.uk

Libby Worth has had extensive experience of working on site based performance through her original training with the renowned choreographer Anna Halprin through to current performance making and PhD supervision. She was part of site-specific performance companies prior to her academic career and has consistently retained strong links with site work within her practice. She has collaborated with artist Julie Brixey-Williams most recently on a dance film on a canal boat moving through the Avon and Kennet Canal. She has written on dance improvisation and its relationship to everyday adaptability and change. For publications and more information see

https://pure.royalholloway.ac.uk/portal/en/persons/libby-worth(675fac01-3b67-48d2-bccf-cc7f5bb306c4).html

Libby is organising the ‘Performing’ events.

This workshop is open to all postgraduate students

Led by poet Dr Isabel Galleymore (Lecturer in Creative Writing, University of Birmingham), this TECHNE Conflux workshop will introduce ecopoetics to postgraduate students whose research deals with issues of environment, place and the nonhuman. With a special focus on animals, we will be reading and discussing ecopoetry, visiting the Grant Museum of Zoology for inspiration and producing some creative work in workshops.  .

Run by poet-scholars with experience in writing, publishing, teaching, and researching ecopoetry, its aim is to train students in environmental awareness, while developing students’ attentiveness to form and genre as vehicles for environmental expression.

Convenors: Adeline Johns-Putra and Lucy Mercer

Schedule:

10 Introduction to ecopoetics
11.15 Coffee Break
11.30 Reading & writing ecopoetics workshop
12.15 Lunch
1.15 Research trip to the Grant Museum of Zoology
2 Writing workshop 2
3.30-4 Discussion of work

To register interest please email: howlikealeaf@gmail.com

This workshop is aimed at postgraduate researchers in the environmental humanities
interested in interdisciplinary collaborations. The first half of the workshop introduces
students to concepts, protocols, and challenges that may emerge in interdisciplinary
research between the environmental humanities and sciences. The second half of the
workshop will present world-leading research into the Anthropocene. Using this as a case
study for interdisciplinary work, students will be invited to consider and discuss possibilities
for initiating and engaging in interdisciplinary collaboration in their research.

The workshop will be led by Adeline Johns-Putra (Reader in English Literature, University of
Surrey) and Matthew Evans (Professor of Ecology, University of Hong Kong) and includes a
keynote presentation by Mark Maslin (Professor of Climatology, University College London).
Mark Maslin is Professor of Climatology at University College London and a Royal Society
Industrial Fellow. He is science advisor to the Global Cool Foundation and the Sopria-Steria
Group, and a member of the Cheltenham Science Festival Advisory Committee. He is the
author of over 165 scientific papers and has also written many popular books, most
recently, The Human Planet: How We Created the Anthropocene (with Simon Lewis, 2018).

Schedule

10-11.30: Practical interdisciplinarity: finding common ground
11.30-11.45 Coffee break
11.45-12.15: Practical interdisciplinarity: Q&A
12.15-12.30: The Anthropocene – preliminary discussion
12.30-1.30: Lunch
1.30-2.30 The Anthropocene (keynote by Mark Maslin)
2.30-3.00: The Anthropocene and your research
3.00-3.30: The Anthropocene and the environmental humanities
3.30-4.00: Final discussion: reflections and questions for the future

Workshop registration and preparation

The workshop is open to all PGRs. Please register by 6 August 2018 (note: new extended
deadline) by emailing howlikealeaf@gmail.com, with the subject line ‘Writing Workshop
registration’ to confirm attendance.


Workshop organisers
Adeline Johns-Putra (University of Surrey) and Lucy Mercer (Royal Holloway)
 

11 Bedford Square, Bloomsbury, London WC1B 3RE

Rooms BSQ003 & BSQ005

*for TECHNE students only

Speakers: Professor John Ó Maoilearca (Kingston), Steven Fowler (Kingston), Patricia Phillippy (Kingston) and Tim Chamberlain (Director of The Wild Tree Adventures)

Chair: Dr Nick Foxton (Kingston)

Drawing on perspectives from the visual arts, performance, film, literature, creative writing and philosophy, this launch frames future events by exploring how the environmental humanities contribute to interdisciplinary research agendas, and how their concern for questions of dialogue, transgression, and transformation posits a particular intervention into the challenges of the Anthropocene. We take encountering both as the sensory meeting of species with each other and/or the natural world, and as the intellectual and artistic encounter between disciplines that concern for this activity facilitates. Bringing together academics, practitioners and students, this event will place interactive participatory activities alongside more formalised discussion and dialogue, laying the foundation for the non-hierarchical learning community of future events.

SCHEDULE

5 - 6.30pm: presentations and roundtable discussions
6.30 - 7pm: delicious canapés, wine and soft drinks