Creative Practice Showcase
Researchers and innovators present projects or art programs and initiatives. All presentations should be grounded in presenters' research experience. Promotional conversations are permissible, however, products or services may not be sold at the conference venue.
Sculpture and Storytelling Workshop for Children Living in Institutions: Using Self-made Bronze Sculptures to Build Stories of Oneself
Creative Practice Showcase Oona Tikkaoja
The Finnish company Hide&Seek Ltd. works with a community artwork consisting of small bronze sculptures made in artist-led workshops with different kinds of people: children, elderly, businessmen. The sculptures will be permanently mounted in urban space, and people can search them with a mobile map. Our important focus group is institutionalized children. We were currently granted funding from the Finnish Ministry of Culture and Education for developing a self-reflection method, where the bronze sculpture can be seen as a symbol of oneself. In the workshop, children are encouraged to create an alter-ego character, who may have some similar features as their creators, but as well some imaginary ones. The characters will be molded in the workshop, and a professional caster will cast them in bronze. There will be two copies made: one will be mounted in the institution, the other one will stay with the child. After creating the characters there will be storytelling workshops, where the children invent life stories for their character. It is possible to use words, voice or images. This will be saved on a web application (which will be published in November 2018). The children will have their personal passwords so they can go to add pieces to the story at any time. They can, for example, take photos of their copy of the character in different locations and post them to their account. The caretakers in the institution can use the evolving story as a tool for discussion.
Organisational Encounters and Speculative Weavings: A Reflexive Research Enquiry
Creative Practice Showcase Deborah Michaels
This performative presentation is an invitation to engage with – and reflect through – material gathered as part of a research enquiry in which I use art-making as a reflexive tool to critically examine less visible aspects of organisational life. Drawing on my background in art psychotherapy, and conceptualising my research as a "speculative weaving," I follow the intertwining threads, reflexive dialogues, and ethical dilemmas that emerge in response to my encounters with – and subjective experiences of – a stroke rehabilitation day-centre. The gestural, performative, repetitive, and constructed nature of weaving offers rich metaphorical and textual material for exploring tensions, resistances, and complex personal, social, and political entanglements as I weave the work through different institutional spaces. The idea of place is particularly poignant when considered in relation to ‘care for and of the body’. It draws attention to what the situation may provide, respond to, evoke, activate, enable, or silence – and points towards how the material, physical, or psychological/emotional body may be received, touched, handled, positioned, examined, and categorised by an "other" in different contexts. Such questions emphasise ethical concerns relating to vulnerability, exposure, intimacy, dependence and trust, and the use – or abuse – of power. Through exploring the dynamic interactions between myself, the institution(s) in which I am immersed, the emerging body of artwork, and the audiences that engage with it, I consider what may be made manifest through the art-making process, and the ethical questions that are provoked through a confrontation with it.
The Spirit of Water: An International Art Project Undertaken with the First Indigenous Peoples of Southern Africa
Creative Practice Showcase Magda Minguzzi
Presentation video projection of the short film “The spirit of water.” Nelson Mandela University production. The 05 and 06 of May 2017 an international project art performance took place in Cape Recife Nature Reserve, Port Elizabeth, (SA) where ancient fish traps still visible. These traps, which are sacred places to the First Indigenous People of Southern Africa, are the most ancient man-made structures present in the area and are highly significant in terms of heritage. However, currently the fish traps are mostly unknown, even if very accessible and near to the city. The scope of the artistic project, rooted on the cultural and heritage re-appropriation, was to draw attention to fragile marine environments, threatened by pollution, excessive fishing, and encroaching human development and industry. The Indigenous People, together with the Nelson Mandela university staff members and students, and local people spent two days in front of the ocean and the fish traps to celebrate rituals in order to be re connect with Nature.
Virtually There: Exploring Process and Deferring Outcome
Creative Practice Showcase Bryonie Reid, Alice Lyons
We present long-term collaborative project Virtually There, initiated and managed by Irish children’s arts organisation Kids’ Own Publishing Partnership, in which artists work with teachers and children through interactive technology in eight Northern Irish schools. Our showcase focuses on process in Virtually There. For this purpose we define process as: exploration and experimentation privileging means over ends and embracing negative capability and uncertainty. It is generally held that artists tend to hold themselves in process. In contrast, by virtue of conventional teacher-training and the demands of curriculum-focused pedagogy, teachers tend to hurry through process to reach specific outcomes at specific stages. We are interested in how artists and teachers together, by fully entering process, make space for children to engage fluidly and open-endedly in, and shape, ideas and methodologies and activities. Outcomes, where they happen, are decided upon collaboratively and late in process. We examine how and why this is done in Virtually There, looking particularly at teachers’ experiences because their training and the systems within which they work tend to under-value process. Remaining with uncertainty and deferring closure are integral to the relationship between artist and teacher and to Virtually There as a project. Likewise, time is integral to the teacher-artist relationship. Virtually There and some artist-teacher partnerships are more than a decade old, offering rich research data on long-term engagements. We will explore these themes through informal and conversational presentation methods, aiming to replicate something of what we argue has made Virtually There so innovative and so effective.
