Practice-led Research @ Lincoln

During a SHARE conference into Artistic Research at the University of Vienna in 2013, Professor Ruta Mateus-Berr used the term “an impossible constellation” in her introductory presentation to try to describe the multitude of contradictory methods, understandings, agendas and histories which could be applied to the range of Artistic Research being undertaken in her Department. This seems an extraordinarily appropriate term for Art and Artistic Research more generally. By acknowledging the impossibility of any attempt to delineate or frame a singular classification of what might constitute Artistic Research, yet by continuing to explore the territory regardless, it echoes the very nature of much artistic practice, which is, it be might suggested, one of the most capable methods we may have of working with and within complexities, contradictions, impossibilities and multiple perspectives.

Our event The Impossible Constellation is a cross between a festival and a conference, celebrating practice-led research and launching a series of events linking practice with research in the University of Lincoln’s College of Arts. The Impossible Constellation is organised jointly by colleagues in Art and Design, Media, and Performing Arts. In the spirit of artistic research/practice-led research, the entire event celebrates a spirit of cross-college collaboration, exploring and articulating all manner of creative practices as areas of research and vice versa.

We are thrilled to have attracted an exciting line-up of contributors—artists, researchers and practitioners from all manner of different arts practices—who will present their performances installations, and interactive games throughout the day. The emphasis of The Impossible Constellation is on letting the practice speak for itself, though any provocation or interrogation of the dynamics and tensions which exist at the practice/research intersections—from performers, attenders and participants—will be welcome and inevitable.

More than anything, today is about celebrating practice as research and research as practice, a celebration for everyone to end the year with something to stimulate, excite and provoke.

We would like to welcome all of you to the Lincoln Performing Arts Centre and to The Impossible Constellation.

Sarah Barrow, Dominic Symonds, Grethe Mitchell and Steve Dutton

Paul Moore

My creative practice attempts to challenge the primacy of the visual by developing sound compositions and installations which address disruptive subjects. Often this is done by creating an interaction between sonic and visual materials, as in the most recent exhibition, The River Still Sings, produced as a contribution to the 2013 UK City of Culture programme in Derry.

My most recent work has been grounded in the artistic manipulation of big data, articulated through project designs which allow an interface between analogue and digital technologies. This shift in creative practice has been informed by the work of Chris Anderson and the emergence of the so-called ‘Maker’ movement.

The exhibits emanating from this process have tended to address contested spaces, for example post- conflict Namibia, community tensions in Northern Ireland, and, in a forthcoming installation, collective memory of the Bloody Sunday events in Derry. These interventions in contested spaces are based on the conviction that there is no sound which is neutral or pure, and that all sound is heard as cultural memory. Sound carries what might be termed ‘echoes of the sacred’ which makes the sonic the perfect space for both analysis of shared cultural belief and disruptive intervention.

Biography

Paul Moore joined the University of Ulster in 1999. He was awarded a personal chair in 2009 becoming Professor of Creative Technology. He is Director of the Research Centre for Creative Technologies (RCCT) and was the Northern Ireland Content Board member at Ofcom 2007-12, and was a member of the government’s Digital Economy Working Group in 2010. He has published widely in a range of journals/books and has exhibited in a number of commissioned gallery spaces in London, Coventry, Belfast, Derry, Lough Neagh, and the National Gallery of Namibia. Internationally Paul’s consultancy work in the creative industries has been based largely in South Africa and Namibia. He was a visiting professor at City Varsity College in Cape Town and was an honorary research fellow with the University of Coventry. In his spare time he is a freelance broadcaster with BBC Radio Ulster and has written and presented a range of documentaries for BBC national radio.

Owen Parry

Fan 1. An ardent devotee or enthusiast
Fan 2.  A device for creating a current of air or breeze

While undertaking my PhD study on trashy tendencies in contemporary art and performance practices, I met a fellow student who was undertaking his research on the button in contemporary design. Envious of the specificity of his miniature study object, which seemed to me open to a multiplicity of genius conceptual relations and uses, I began to fantasize about having my very own specific objet d’étude: I came up with the performance fan.

This lecture-performance stages this fan-tasy. It draws on fan culture and the utilization of fan devices across a history of popular and avant-garde performances from Ballet Mécanique to strip tease, from fainting for Michael Jackson to a Yoko Ono tribute act, from fan riots to an intimate encounter with a Polish skinhead with a Manchester United tattoo. It looks at how fans perform, the potentials of impassioned collectivity, and how the fantasy of specificity opens up a constellation of possibilities – real and fictional, human and non-human.

Biography

Owen G Parry (b. 1983) is a London based artist and researcher working in contemporary performance and visual culture, across theatre, gallery, club contexts and the Internet. His PhD study Trashy Tendencies: Indeterminate Acts of Refusal in Contemporary Art and Performance Practice was completed at Goldsmiths in 2013 funded by AHRC. Owen was Researcher on Performance Matters, a 3-year performance-research project with the Live Art Development Agency, Goldsmiths and University of Roehampton (2009-2012). He co-edited a special issue of Dance Theatre Journal (2011), and currently teaches on the MA Body in Performance at Trinity Laban.

www.owengparry.com

Loraine Leeson

I will discuss my practice that for over thirty-five years has explored ways in which art can be used to support social change. Central to this have been processes of collaboration and participation that have brought cultural dimensions to activism and community-based knowledge into the public domain. I will show how lessons learned from working alongside the trades union movement and the communities of London’s Docklands informed subsequent engagement with a range of groups, local organisations and individuals, drawing on new technologies as they emerged to enable their voices to be heard. Finally I will describe some recent and current projects. The Young Person’s Guide to East London involved hundreds of teenagers in identifying what they considered to be best in their neighbourhoods and of interest to their age group, leading to the production of a publicly accessible online resource that also offered a glimpse into what lay behind the gloss of Olympics hype. Meanwhile Active Energy is an ongoing project involving citizen-led innovation by older people that focuses on renewable energy. It has already led to a wind-driven lightwork for the roof of an AgeUK building, collaboration between seniors in the US and UK, a water-driven installation opposite the Houses of Parliament, and a working tidal turbine in process.

Biography

Loraine Leeson is a visual artist particularly known for her 1980’s cultural campaigning in support of the communities of London’s Docklands and subsequent participatory work in East London. In 2011 she was Fulbright Scholar in Residence at University of Washington and is currently Senior Research Fellow at University of Westminster and Senior Lecturer at Middlesex University. As director of the arts charity cSPACE her recent work has attracted a Media Trust Inspiring Voices award and Olympic Inspire Mark, while her public artwork The Catch was voted a London 2012 Landmark. She is currently working with older people on a project involving citizen-led innovation.

www.cspace.org.uk