Transdisciplinary Explorations into Performativity

16/07/2018

16/07/2018

Impact Research Question 1:
Has this transdisciplinary conference offered you new ways of conceptually understanding your work?

16/07/2018

Impact Research Question 2:
How would you describe/define your work/discipline ?

16/07/2018

Impact Research Question 3:
Has this transdisciplinary conference worked to open up new ways of seeing/conceptually framing? Has this had any impact in the way you approach practice? These responses can be from participants' different perspectives. Eg: If you're an academic/lecturer - has the conference had any impact on your pedagogical approach to teaching; or if you're a Performing Arts student or Professional practitioner - Did the conference open up for you new ways of transdisciplinary practice?

16/07/2018

Impact Research Question 4:
How was this transdisciplinary conference valuable to you, the attendee?

16/07/2018

Impact Research Question 5:
In a commercialised, technologically driven global culture: How is this transdisciplinary conference valuable in response?

13/07/2018

Conference Timetable:

MONDAY 16th JULY 2018

9:15am: Registration and delegates arrive

10am: Welcome by Dr. Les Gillon – Head of Research within Performing Arts in UCLan’s School of Journalism, Media and Performance

10:10-10:30: Comments from Professor LubainaHimid OBE

10:30-10:45: Introduction to conference themes by Dr. Amy Rome

10:45-12pm: Opening key-note lecture ‘Why Theatre’from international director Enrique Pardo – Pantheatre’s transdisciplinary approach to performance and training

12pm-12:30pm: Opening reflective responses from Tim Lamford to Pardo and Pantheatre’s transdisciplinary praxes

12:30-1:00pm: Questions, discussions and responses


LUNCH: 1-2:30pm

2:30pm-5:30pm: 1st‘Choreographic Theatre’ laboratory led by Enrique Pardo in St. Peter’s Arts Centre

5:45pm: Meet and greet (canapes and drinks provided) in Media Factory Cafe

6-7pm: In ME007– ‘Saiserit’ – an installation performance by Giorgio De Carolis

SAISERIT (deriving from the reversed spelling of the name TIRESIAS) is a durational interdisciplinary solo performance emerging from an exploration on the theme of close-mindedness, particularly being influenced by D. F. Wallace’s definition of blind certainty as “a close-mindedness that amounts to an imprisonment so total that the prisoner doesn’t even know he’s locked up”. [from ‘This is Water’] Through the fabrication of a symbolic mythological persona and the setting up of an audio/visual performance territory. The audience explores and actively engages with how I, as an international contemporary transdisciplinary dancer, am approaching the challenge of making a conceptual,
non-autobiographical so lo piece of artistic work.



TUESDAY 17th JULY 2018


10-11am: Lecture/presentation from Dr. Julie Bokowiec on “Transgendered Voice & Performativity”


This lecture, will be delivered by Dr. Julie Bokowiec (Research Fellow from the University of Huddersfield). She will explore her praxis by first examining and talking about the composer Peter Maxwell Davies’ (1934-2016) music theatre particularly “Eight Songs for a Mad King”in relation to the collaboration with the actor/extended voice practitioner Roy Hart(1925-1975). Dr. Bokowiec will present a close reading of the score; speak about its challenges from a vocal/performer point of view; how it invites radical interpretations; and examine how the score can be read as a document of the creative process/collaboration between Roy Hart and the composer Peter Maxwell Davies. (How the score perhaps offers a map of a process and p rovides more than a visual/historical trace of two very distinct personalities with very different approaches to voice.) Further, the score which teeters on the 'incomplete' is also symptomatic: it presents a fully embodied and embedded aesthetic madness that ironically works - it presents a kind of schizophrenia on the page that nevertheless adheres to a strong logic. In reflecting on what Bokowiec describes as a ‘kind of schizophrenia on the page’, she may draw within this transdisciplinary research, on the philosophy of French feminist Luce Irigaray. In order to speak about this schizoid-logic in practice, Dr. Bokowiec will talk about her own performance of “Eight Songs for a Mad King”. Examining the manner in which the piece is 'excited' by transgender - how a positively trans-gendered voice can play 'more than two' - stepping into the 'haunted' realm of otherness, archetypes and non-human specters. For this reason, she will also draw upon J ulius Eastman's performance of “Eight Songs for a Mad King”. One of the most powerful socially and politically charged performances. A range of audio and visual examples will be used in the presentation.



11-12pm: Linda Wise, co-director of Pantheatre and direct living descendent of Roy Hart's practice will respond to Dr. Bokowiec's lecture about Roy Hart and the trans-gendered voice.

12-12:30pm: Responses from Dr. Patrick Campbell (MMU)

12:30-1:00pm: Questions, dialogues and reflections

LUNCH: 1-2:30pm

2:30-5:30pm: ME007 - Master Class with Linda Wise – Pantheatre’s transdisciplinary approach to voice and performance


Tuesday night: Performances in ME007

6-7pm: Nic Smith – “Between Voice and Theatre: The Voice as Theatre”

As an interdisciplinary artist, I have always struggled to place myself in the creative world due to feeling torn between genres of expression. Since discovering the interdisciplinary practices of Pantheatre at University whilst training as an actor. I have admired how they are able to bring together a collective of interdisciplinary artists with an aim of allowing the artist to “take the work and make it his or her own.” Working with them has really allowed me to understand more about the importance of all of the artistic components within a process of creating performance. Whethe r this becomes a solid project or a loose framework in which to improvise in or build on for development. At this moment in my life, I find myself writing songs. I am interested in artists who are able to “auteur” their work. For me this means taking full responsibility of what one is performing. From determining what one wants to say/communicate, why one wants to say/communicate it and to say/communicate it honestly with no holding back. I would like to share in this with you, some moments of vocal expression through improvisation and go on to perform some of my finished song compositions.


7:15pm - 8pm: LightTrap Entertainment

“Towards the Talkies” is a transdisciplinary practice-led theatre piece that explores themes that are very culturally relevant today, namely racism and sexism. The work tackles the issue of ageing in the visually–driven American culture of 1920s Hollywood. Exploring how being a star of the black and white screen might have been glamorous, idealized. The performance reveals perhaps how pathetically brief this glamourized life is for the American actor, particularly for women. Using a range of techniques, this demonstration/performance study integrates and applies methods explicitly drawn from Pantheatre and what Pardo defines as ‘Choreographic Theatre’ and; the pioneering movement training for actors described as ‘Biomechanic s’ first developed by the seminal Russian theatre practitioner Meyerhold. The company LightTrap explore and present this original piece of theatre ‘Towards the Talkies’ as a platform from which to study and discuss how they are creating this theatrical work applying this integrated methodology.



LightTrap Entertainment is a company founded by six actors who recently graduated from the
BA (Hons) Acting course at UCLan. "Towards the Talkies" is their first independent production. Originally, it was part of a practice-led dissertation. Devised from scratch, using methods they have been taught over their three-year undergraduate Acting degree. Through their passion, commitment and hard work, since graduating, this work has become even more central to how this new theatre company creates work. The actor s want to expand on the play and explore the world they created through various methods, such as Biomechanics movement work and ‘choreographic theatre’. After the conference, the company is planning to take the full version of the play on tour in 2019 and visit various colleges and schools to educate young people on making and devising theatre.



WEDNESDAY 18th JULY 2018

10-11am: Presentation/lecture from Dr. Jane Turner from Man Met on: Eugenio Barba and Odin Teatre’s transdisciplinary approaches to intercultural and international performance

11-12:30pm: Dialogue between Pardo and Turner – comparisons and how Barba’s praxis influenced Pantheatre’s approach

12:30-1pm: Questions, dialogues and reflections


LUNCH: 1-2.30pm


2:30-5:30pm: Second Choreographic Theatre Laboratory with Enique Pardo’s in St. Peter’s Arts Centre

5:45-6:45pm: Final plenary and closing comments in ME007


THURSDAY 19th JULY 2018
Graduation Presentation of Honorary Fellow to Enrique Pardo

Evening final reception at the International Hotel.

13/07/2018

A 4-day International Symposium of lectures, practice-led workshops and performances. (Mon 16th July - Thurs 19th July 2018)

Guest key-note speakers & practitioners include: international directors Enrique Pardo, Linda Wise, Professor Lubaina Himid OBE, Dr. Julie Bokowiec (University of Huddersfield), Dr. Jane Turner (Manchester Metropolitan University), Dr Patrick Campbell (Manchester Metropolitan University), Tim Lamford (UCLan), Giorgio De Carolis (UCLan).

This international conference will provide a context from which to explore and further develop transdisciplinary approaches to ‘performativity’. Here the term ‘performativity’ is used and applied in providing a wider lens within this international conference in facilitating meaningful transdisciplinary dialogues not only between all practice-led disciplines within the areas of Performing Arts and Fine Arts. But also, as a way of facilitating a wider collaborative dialogue between relevant interdisciplinary areas of theory: philosophy, depth psychology, and cultural studies. In a global cultural climate, that increasingly requires artists able to respond to this ever- emerging global culture. The conference aims to further develop transdisciplinary critical frameworks that inform and better ground with complexity, both theoretical and practical understandings towards transdisciplinary practice.

Exploring transdisciplinary approaches to ‘performativity’, this international conference offers a rare opportunity in the UK to engage with the pioneering praxis of Paris-based Pantheatre and its director, published author Enrique Pardo. Pardo’s praxis offers a new vision towards performance and ‘performativity’. Influenced by both the Post-Jungian depth psychologist James Hillman’s translation of Jung’s original psychological theories and the philosophies of Existentialism and Phenomenology. This praxis exposes a shift, a move away from humanistic psychological approaches to artistic practice. These meta-philosophical principles (more existential & phenomenological underpinnings) focus the practice much more on the study of the complex relations of the performers’ intersubjective and sensate experience. Reflected in his contemporary philosophy towards performativity and practice, Pardo states: “I am once again emphasizing the external factors, the understanding, as opposed to self-instrumental practices, necessary as they are in training, because of the danger that self-instrumental practices become self-centered and self-expressive philosophies, and do not tune us as responders to the world.” (Pardo, 2005:3) Traditionally, modern western approaches to theatre and art are grounded in humanistic philosophical paradigms that emphasize, and are focused on the individual ‘self’. Similarly, in practice from this modern perspective Pardo concludes: “The problem with this humanistic model is what is performed is not so much meaning but meaningfulness or display of personal sensitivity. It is the performers’ subjectivity that we are actually being called to contemplate in the performance, not the ideas or objective image.”(Ibid) Thus this transdisciplinary conference offers the opportunity to explore both through practice and theory: the possibilities that these performative paradigm shifts offer towards new transdisciplinary perspectives.