You are warmly invited to this research presentation and/or free one-day seminar at the University of Kent with Prof. Malgorzata Sugiera, Dr Mateusz Borowksi, and Mateusz Charberski from the Jagiellonian University in Krakow as part of the ERC funded project Artificial Bodies/Living Machines in the Laboratory of Performative Arts.
At the Crossroads of Arts and Sciences
Lecture, 29th September 2017, 5 p.m.
Prof. Malgorzata Sugiera and Dr Mateusz Borowksi (Jagiellonian University)
University of Kent, Canterbury Campus (room tbc)
The lecture is devoted to the problem of today’s performative practices which increasingly enter into creative alliances with hard sciences. The main focus of our lecture is the way in which performance draws upon the latest advancements and developments in technoscience to shed light on the process of production and validation of scientific discoveries and research methods. Drawing upon the notion of situated knowledges we will attempt to locate contemporary experimentation in performative arts at the crossroads of arts and sciences as critical interventions that underscore not only the process of the production of scientific or historical facts but also highlight the function of media as significant agents in the process of the production of knowledge.
Arts, Sciences and Spectatorial Experiences in the Anthropocene
Seminar Workshop, 30th September 2017, 10.00 a.m. – 1 p.m., 3 p.m. – 6 p.m.
Prof. Malgorzata Sugiera and Dr Mateusz Borowksi (Jagiellonian University)
University of Kent, Canterbury Campus (room tbc)
The problem of virtual witnessing, introduced in the lecture, will provide a point of departure for the discussions and practical analyses during the workshop. We will approach the problem of the relationship between sciences and arts by focusing on case-studies of such artistic forms which effectively mediate between various domains of public discourse, notably the laboratory and social life. Those relationships are manifest not only in the field of experimental performative arts, but also in popular culture, which both disseminates and interprets scientific notions for wide audiences of non-experts. A case in point is the recent concept of the Anthropocene, the epoch of humans, which within the span of twenty years has become part of an expanding discourse in social sciences, humanities, and then in the arts.
In the first part of the workshop we will take a closer look at a 3D computer-animated Walt Disney picture Moana, released in 2016, to read it as an allegory of the Anthropocene. This theme will be further elaborated on by comparing the Disney feature with Robert J. Flaherty’s Moana: A Romance from the Golden Age (1926), which will bring out the narrative and representational strategies of constructing images of nature and its relations to culture. In the second part of the workshop we will venture into hybrid performative arts of the Anthropocene to look for different modes of spectatorial experience emerging from human and nonhuman encounters. Firstly, we will analyse multisensory experiences generated by the installation Ice Watch (2014) by the artist Olafur Eliasson and the geologist Minik Rosing where spectators are invited to engage with blocks of melting ice from icebergs. Secondly, we will discuss the multimedia installation Tame is to Tame (2016) in which the artist Pei-Ying Lin and the microbiologist Miranda de Graaf stage potential symbiotic relations between humans and viruses.
For further information or to register your interest in attending the seminar, please email Dr Rosemary Klich (R.E.Klich@kent.ac.uk).
Małgorzata Sugiera is a Full Professor at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland, and the Head of Department for Performativity Studies. Her main research fields are performativity theory, cultural studies and queer studies. She is active as a translator of scholarly books and theatre plays. She has published eleven books in Polish, most Other Shakespeare. New Readings of the European Canon (2008), Non-Humans. Reports from Artificial Natures (2015), together with Mateusz Borowski, In the Trap of Opposites. Ideologies of Identity (2012) and Nonnatural Natures. Performances of Technosciences and Performatives Arts (2016).
Mateusz Borowski teaches cultural studies, memory studies and translation studies at the Department for Performativity Studies at the Jagiellonian University, Kraków. He is also active as a translator. He published In Search of the Real. New Developments of the European Playwriting of the 1990s (2005), Strategies of Forgetting. Memory and Cyberculture (2015), together with Małgorzata Sugiera, In the Trap of Opposites. Ideologies of Identity (2012) and Nonnatural Natures. Performances of Technosciences and Arts (2016).
Mateusz Chaberski is a PhD student at the Department for Performativity Studies at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow. In 2016, he won a scholarship of Foundation for Polish Science for innovative research in Humanities. His academic interests range from performance studies, memory studies to translation studies. He is also an acquisitions editor at the Jagiellonian University Press. In 2015, he published his first book (Syn)aesthetic Experience. Performative Aspects of Site-Specific Performance (Krakow: Księgarnia Akademicka).