[-empyre-] : "(E)MOTION FREQUENCY deceleration" / second week, introducing our guests

[Johannes Birringer]

dear all,
we are starting the second week of our workshop-forum,
and after Michael's careful and considerate post, in which he tried to summarize and interweave some of the thoughts that were moved forward last week,
my role as moderator is made so much easier........ I wish to thank our discussants from last week for having provided fresh ground for our theme, and planted some seeds.  I had invited a gardener from the east-midlands to speak to ask about gardening, but he preferred not to and suggested he was not keeping up with matters academic. I insisted our forum was not academic, but he was unmoved.


Well, it is completely open to our other discussants, and you our resonant soft-skinned studio, to continue the thought-movement.
it's a great pleasure to introduce our guests for this week:

WEEK 2
^ Claudia Robles

Claudia Robles was born in Bogotá (Colombia). Currently, she lives in Cologne (Germany). She finished studies in Fine Arts (1990)  in Bogotá  (Colombia). She pursued postgraduate studies such as: Film Animation (1992-1993) in Milan (Italy), MA in Visual Arts (1993- 1995) in Geneva (Switzerland) and Sound Design and Electronic Composition in Essen (Germany) She was artist in residence (2004-2006) at the ZKM Center in  Karslruhe. Her most relevant work presented there was the piece “Seed/Tree” (audiovisual Installation/Butoh performance with live electronics). Her currently theoretical and practical research is about the use of bio-data in real-time multimedia performances.


^ Nilüfer Ovalıoğlu

Nilüfer received her bachelor’s degree in sculpture specializing in stone carving at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, İstanbul in 2001. She was then awarded a Fulbright scholarship to study her MFA at State University in New York at Stony Brook where she prepared a series of video and performance work. She trained in physical theatre at London International School of Performing Arts from 2006-08. Physical Theatre has been the master of all her expression. Since 2002, her practice transformed from digital performance to drama sketches that unveil the grotesque, researching the bizarre corners of being human. Her work expands grotesque musical sketch, cabaret, physical theatre and comical absurd worlds. Her past work consists of elements of these in video and digital performance. Sh has recently finished her practice based PhD at Brunel University’s Drama Department, entitled ‘The Female Bouffon’, and is now a lecturer at Istanbul Aydın University’s Drama Department.


^ Jack Butler
Jack responded to the invitation by writing: It is so very nice to hear from you. When I read the words, 'the desire for deceleration', I felt my breathing slow, my blood pressure shift down and my eyes tear over. I think I would like to join your soft list. Although I have given material form to 'time', experienced as epigenesis, modeling human embryological development over many years of trans-disciplinary visual art/medicine research, and experienced time in sensuous play through daily life with my Inuit art-making collaborators in the Canadian Arctic, I have never approached my desire for deceleration (directly or indirectly), with the written word. I would love to know more about your overarching empyre project and would be please to accept your invitation to join the October forum. Please let me know how to proceed and I hope to continue our conversation started on that bench outside the Art Centre at U of Toronto.*

[Jack is one of the authors/co-editors, with Ruby Arngna'naaq, Sheila Butler, Patrick Mahon and William Noah, of the amazing book Art and Cold Cash (YYZBOOKS, 2009), which stages the encounter between “southern” artists and Inuit artists examining the discourses around money, the complicit and at times awkward relationship between southern market forces and the changing cultural climate of the North.]


^ Jennifer McColl

Jennifer is a Chilean dancer, performance theorist, and visual artist currently based in England. She has finished her MPhil in Performing Art Research at Brunel University, London, and now resides in Spain.  Her work as a performer and theorist has deepened on topics related with dance and technology. She has presented lectures in South America and Europe, and published books and articles in different countries. Her actual research focuses on the development of science of work in relation with the integration of technology for dance and performance in different historical contexts. Her artistic practice is based on the relationship between body and technology, exploring different media and disciplines for the generation of body-image compositions. Her actual work presents a collaborative methodology, focusing on the creation of multimedia installations that compose architectural environments from where to present the relationship between body and space.


^  Gordana Novakovic ;

Originally a painter, with 12 solo exhibitions to her credit, Gordana has more than twenty years’ experience of developing and exhibiting large-scale time-based media projects. Her artistic practice and theoretical work that intersects art, science and advanced digital technologies has formed five Cycles: “Parallel Worlds,” “The Shirt of a Happy Man,” “Infonoise” and “Fugue.” A constant mark of her work throughout her experiments with new technologies has been her distinctive method of creating an effective cross-disciplinary framework for the emergence of synergy through collaboration. Gordana exhibited and lectured at leading interdisciplinary festivals and symposia, and artistic and scientific conferences; such as ISEA, Towards a Science of Consciousness and Mutamorphosis most recently. Alongside her artistic practice, in the last five years Gordana has been artist-in-residence at Computer Science Department, University College London, where she has founded and convenes the Tesla Art and Science Group. She has received a number of international and British academic awards.


^  Olu.Taiwo

Olu Taiwo graduated from the Laban Centre with an MA in Choreography and wrote his PhD on Performance philosophy. He teaches dance, visual development and performance in a combination of real and virtual formats and has a background in Fine Art. He is an actor, dancer and drummer performing in national and international contexts. His main interests are to propagate 21st century issues concerning the interaction between body, identity, audience and technology. This includes research based on both his concepts of the Return beat (West African rhythmic sensibility), and the Physical journal (Embodied knowledge and memory). He performed a lead role in Suna No Onna iand UKIYO [Moveable Worlds], and developed Harmonious Interruptions. a new piece with Ace Dance co based in Newbury, and a new solo work, Interfacing. He is particularly interested, at the moment, in redefining the nature of Practice and being as a goal and state of becoming. This is to say, Practice as methodology and Alaafia (Yoruba) or Eudiamenia (Greek) as outcome with the development of techniques as research data.


with many regards

Johannes Birringer



To subscribe via  the World Wide Web, visit
       http://lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/empyre

Send your own posting to:
       empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au