Fleshing it Out: embodied practices and socio-political impact

How does practice-based research with a focus on body-based knowledges and insights help to concretise the felt experience of socio-political themes such as commoning, power, and relationality? How can we use embodied, experiential techniques to better articulate how we relate to ourselves, to each other and to systems of power? Can practice-based research help us to do differently, not just say differently? A one day symposium hosting practical labs on a variety of embodied practice-research approaches. With an interdisciplinary focus and an inclusive approach, we have invited practitioners working across dance and psychology, sound and computing, design, and theatre. We will aim to reflect our enquiry in the structure and holding of the day, as well as in the themes brought by invited artists and scholars. Please come prepared to experiment, participate, and co-create the day with us.

The title of the event is a play on the word 'in-carn-ate' - literally, to make flesh. We are, in a sense, engaged in the messy process of fleshing out the potential insights of embodied practice-research for socio-political issues.

Location:
UAL Doctoral School at University of the Arts London, address: HH201-203, Second Floor, 272 High Holborn, London WC1V 7EY

(Info on accessibility: https://www.accessable.co.uk/university-of-the-arts-london-ual/london-college-of-fashion-high-holborn/access-guides/london-college-of-fashion-high-holborn )

Schedule:
9:45AM: Welcome and opening
10AM-11:00AM: Lab 1: Emilyn Claid
11:15AM-12:45PM: Lab 2: Panel of practice + dialogue: Gabriel Hoosain Khan, Nadia Jaglom, Victoria Burgher
12:45PM-2:00PM: lunch provided + informal networking
2:00PM-3:00PM: Lab 3: Atau Tanaka
3:15PM-4:15PM: Lab 4: Ben Spatz
4:15 - 4:45: Closing

Confirmed artists and scholars:
Emilyn Claid After an early career in the National Ballet of Canada, emilyn was co-founder of X6 Dance Space in London, a pioneering organisation for New Dance (1975-1980). In the 1980s emilyn was artistic director of Extemporary Dance Theatre and in the 1990s choreographed for companies such as Phoenix and CandoCo. Working as an independent dance artist emilyn made and performed a series of iconic solo works finding her voice as a lesbian-queer artist. emilyn is also an emeritus professor and a Gestalt psychotherapist. She has recently published FALLING through Dance and Life, (Bloomsbury 2021) and is currently touring her solo show ‘Untitled’.
Atau Tanaka studied Physical Sciences at Harvard University then gained his doctorate in Computer Music at Stanford University’s CCRMA. He has since helped to establish the field of Music Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). Atau has carried out research at IRCAM Centre Pompidou, Apple France, and Sony Computer Science Laboratory (CSL) Paris in areas of interactive music, immersive media, network performance, and human-data interaction. He has performed widely in the experimental music scene in Europe, Asia, and the Americas. His work has been exhibited at Ars Electronica, SFMOMA and performed at Sonar and WOMAD festivals and released on labels like Superpang, Touch and Subrosa. His research has been supported by the European Research Council, UK and French research councils. He was artistic co-director of STEIM and currently is professor and co-director of the Centre for Sound, Technology & Culture (CSTC) at Goldsmiths University of London, and works with Bristol Interaction Group and MSH Paris Nord.
Ben Spatz (they/he) is a nonbinary scholar-practitioner working at the intersections of artistic research and critical theory. They are the author of What a Body Can Do (2015) and Race and the Forms of Knowledge (2024), among other publications, and founding editor of the videographic Journal of Embodied Research. For more information please visit: www.urbanresearchtheater.com
Gabriel Hoosain-Khan (they/them) specializes in developing creative methodologies (such as art, drama, and creative writing) to facilitate dialogues and healing, conduct participatory action research, and develop strategic responses to trauma and violence. Gabriel has experience in managing and implementing regional projects in southern Africa on topics related to gender and sexuality, poverty and hunger, and diversity and inclusion. Gabriel last worked at the University of Cape Town, where they piloted the Creative Change Laboratory (CCoLAB). CCoLAB created an art-activism laboratory with marginalized youth in Cape Town. The project culminated in an exhibition, zine and mini-documentary. Gabriel is currently pursuing their PhD at the University of Brighton.
Nadia Yahlom is a PhD student at CREAM, Westminster, looking at hauntedness, supernatural life and the necropolitical between Palestine and the UK, whose research considers how both humans, artefacts and landscapes reverberate with colonial violence. Her work explores how spaces such as museums, state archives and other institutions reinforce colonial biopolitics in relation to the Palestinian living and dead, and asks how individuals and collectives can create materials which subvert these power regimes, preserve folk/oral histories and respond generatively to absence, particularly in the context of cultural erasure and unfolding genocide. Nadia is also a co-founder of Sarha Collective, an artists collective for experimental art forms from Palestine and the broader SWANA region. @sarhacollective
Victoria Burgher is an artist whose practice-based, interdisciplinary PhD research at the University of Westminster uses porcelain to interrogate ideological and material whiteness from an explicitly anti-racist position. Her work using colonial commodities to reveal the whitewashing of British imperial history is exhibited nationally and internationally. She has been awarded technē-AHRC funding for her doctoral research and is a technē Racial Justice Fellow. She has a BA Hons Ceramics from the University of Westminster and an MA Art and Politics from Goldsmiths, University of London. She lives and works in East London. Link: http://www.victoriaburgher.com/

This event is a TECHNE student-led event, funded by TECHNE DTP and organised by TECHNE-funded PhD candidates Julia Pond, Joana Chicau and Viveca Mellegard.
Julia Pond is a dance artist and researcher focused on the intersection of dance and political economy. Her work uses movement, text, image, and sometimes, bread dough to create playful performance and workshops. juliapond.com
Joana Chicau is a designer with a background in dance. She researches the intersection of the body with the designed and programmed environment, aiming at widening the ways in which digital sciences is presented and made accessible to the public. Her practice interweaves web programming with choreography: from the production of digital technologies to performances and workshops. She also co-organizes and participates in events on collaborative and algorithmic improvisation, digital justice and activism. She is a PhD candidate at the Creative Computing Institute, part of the University of the Arts London. https://researchers.arts.ac.uk/2383-joana-chicau/about

Viveca Mellegård is particularly interested in the knowledge and skills embedded in the craft of dyeing with natural indigo and how embodied practices can cultivate human-plant relationships. She is working in the Economic Botany Department at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew on research linking Kew’s colonial era collections of Indigofera tinctoria from India to contemporary indigo production and dyeing in West Bengal.

Host or Publisher Julia Pond