TECHNE Confluxes

A technē Conflux is an extended training, development, exhibition or performance programme which aims to enhance research or intellectual skills, or facilitate the sharing of expertise amongst doctoral students in the arts and humanities.

Current and Upcoming Confluxes

‘How Like a Leaf’: Nature, Art and World

Led by Dr Danielle Sands (Royal Holloway)

The Conflux ‘How Like a Leaf’: Art, Nature and World will bring together TECHNE students from across the humanities to assess, adapt and develop interdisciplinary approaches to the relationships between art, nature and world, with the assistance of world-renowned practitioners and theorists. The phrase ‘how like a leaf’ is taken from the work of Donna Haraway, a thinker who is interested not only in the shared ‘molecular architecture’ of plants and animals, but also in the history of cross-species relations and the variety of tools and discourses with which we have addressed and represented these relations, as well as in the possibility of an aesthetics which bridges between human and nonhuman.

The Conflux aims:

to examine the relationship between aesthetic theories of nature and twenty-first century artistic practice.
to consider the ways in which historical accounts of the relationships between art, nature and world might be re-purposed to address the contemporary world.
to provide a space, in the form of workshops, roundtables and an exhibition, in which these conversations between artistic products and aesthetic theories will reach a wider audience.

The Conflux will run from June 2018 - June 2020 and will consist of four themes: Encountering; Writing; Performing and Thinking. It is organised by: Danielle Sands (Royal Holloway), Nick Foxton (Kingston), Adeline Johns-Putra (Surrey), Lucy Mercer (Royal Holloway), Flora Parrott (Royal Holloway), Sara Upstone (Kingston), Daniel Whistler (Royal Holloway) and Libby Worth (Royal Holloway).

Art, Performance & .........

Led by Professor Adrian Heathfield (Roehampton)

These six intensive study days, spread over two years, are each one day long and are organised around key concepts in interdisciplinary critical theory that impact upon the study of art and performance: materiality, the sonorous, mobility, the common, temporality and labour. These sessions are targeted at history, philosophy, creative and visual arts PhD researchers working in diverse disciplines and home contexts, either through theoretical study or practice-as-research.

Existing research training provisions across the TECHNE institutions tends to be largely generic (navigating university processes, approaches to library or archive work, giving a paper, professional publishing practices, etc.) or discipline specific (rehearsal observation or dramaturgy in Theatre Studies, notation and scoring in Dance, documentary practice in Visual Arts, etc.) This programme takes a different tack, building on and learning from other research training initiatives within TECHNE institutions that have been interdisciplinary in their theoretical influences, while being focused around arts and humanities research practices and projects.

PhD researchers within the programme will gain access to advanced research practices and thinking around research dilemmas when working with specific concepts and within specific fields of critical influence. They will get to workshop and discuss their own research questions and problematics with their peers from other disciplines and institutions, but also with significant figures in international research whose work has helped to shape the concept and its attendant fields of study. The series also aims to raise the level and breadth of critical address for those working in practice-as-research methodologies through contact with advanced international critical and artistic research.

Upcoming events: workshop on 11th October, workshop on 6th December

Scenographics: Acts of worlding

Led by Dr Rachel Hann (University of Surrey)

The principal aim of this 6-month Conflux is to bring together PGR, academics and practitioners to investigate how ‘scenographics’ (Hann 2018) enact, speculate, or complicate orders of ‘world’. This overall aim breaks down into three key learning objectives for the PGR:

Introduction to the potential of scenography and scenographics as a conceptual lens in the interdisciplinary crafting of ‘scenes’, ‘worlds’, and ‘atmospheres’.
Reflect on the impact of ‘new materialist’ thinking for the interdisciplinary study of staged material cultures, such as interior design and visual merchandising as well as gardening and installation art.
Consider the case for scenography and scenographics as a sister strategy – alongside dramaturgy and choreography – as a formative practice and affective trait of staged material cultures.

This line of enquiry builds upon the concept of ‘worlding’ first introduced by Heidegger and more recently refined by the anthropologist Kathleen Stewart. Worlding stresses the incessant processes that construct, re-constitute and affect how orders of world are experienced. Building on the critical frameworks that inform notions of ‘vital materialism’ (Bennett 2009) as well as ‘creative geographies’ (Hawkins 2014) and ‘affective atmospheres’ (Anderson 2011; Böhme 2013), this Conflux composes three expert workshops with invited scholars and practitioners that introduce and debate the key concepts through a combination of seminars, practical exercises and short lectures. These small group tasks and discussions will inform the curation and focus of an open symposium, which marks the end of the Conflux.

Conflux website: http://scenographics.rachelhann.com/

Performance as Research: Exploring Practice as Alternative Epistemologies

Led by Dr Kate Aughterson (University of Brighton)

Performance as Research (PAR) is an emergent research methodology which utilises and acknowledges the various modes of performance (voice, body, space, movement, language, sound, texture, shape, words) as illuminative and investigative modes of research. These workshops in the cultural hub that is Brighton will explore these modes of experience through a series of workshops by practitioners, performance historians and theorists in order to enable PhD students to develop their own performance as research, through detailed discussion and demonstration with participants over the fifteen months and with an opportunity to showcase final or work-in-progress at the Brighton Fringe (at a number of locations) in May 2020. The network established through the workshops and Open Space will provide participants with ongoing mentors for their work post PhD, and a network of creative and critical practitioners who can mutually support their future performative work and careers.

Upcoming events: Open Space event, 8th November.

Philosophy and Critical Methods

^{Credit: Jean-Paul Sartre, Gilles Deleuze, and Michel Foucault; picture by Elie Kagan.}

Led by Dr Christian Gilliam (University of Surrey)

Critical research is defined as an approach skeptical of ‘problem-solving’ and the supposed social and political neutrality of knowledge construction and use of method. Alas, as the premise and thus research of critical approaches is intimately related to the question of method, the link to it is often hard to discern for PGR students.The matter is confounded by the current hegemony of ‘problem-solving’ and positivist discourse in UK Higher Education. The result is that students and academics alike have been unconsciously nudged into translating their work in terms inconsistent with their philosophical ethos and research method, and have likewise become ill-equipped to situate their work in relation to ‘problem-solving’; be that in the form of research proposals, funding bids, job applications, or a thesis/ thesis outline. This is making critical research vulnerable to charges of intellectual and methodological inanity. Critical approaches, however, are underpinned by a rigorous tradition of thought, offering necessary social, political and economic critiques, and challenges to research necessary to the epistemic and democratic advancement of academia. The Conflux ‘Philosophy and Critical Methods’ aims to address this lacuna in knowledge and researcher training, bringing together TECHNE students from across the disciplines to learn, adapt and develop the purpose of critical research and the multiplicity of methods employed therein, with the assistance of experienced practitioners and theorists.

Conflux website: https://technecriticalmethods.wordpress.com/

Upcoming events: 7th November, Writing and Performing "Woman": Feminist and Gender Theory

Writing & Art

Led by Dr Lucy Steeds (University of the Arts London)

Join us to debate and further writing in relation to artistic, performative and curatorial practice. In a series of four intensive Writing Days, you will enter into discussion with leading international voices. Moreover, you will workshop your own prose in a constructive group-crit scenario. You will be invited to quiz our invited guests on their insights into writing as a process or medium, and to discuss their work as read ahead of time. You will further analyse and share feedback on each other’s writing, in a session led by a dedicated tutor who will participate in all the Writing Days and address issues arising in and across them.

Whether you sign up for one of the Writing Days, or all four, the following questions may be tackled: what academic prose style is productive for my thesis? what is the relationship of this prose style to what I might publish? how to write about creative practice without cauterising it? how to relate art theory to art practice? how to write about my own creative practice? what different voices does my thesis require? what writing tips can I learn from leading voices across a variety of fields?

Upcoming workshops: Lee Weng-Choy, 11th October

Rethinking archival research, methods and practice

Led by Dr Deborah Madden (University of Brighton)

This Conflux addresses key methodologies and historiographies associated with archival research and practice. The archive’s authoritative status has come under increasing pressure across the arts, humanities and even sciences in the last thirty years or so. This richly diverse programme of workshops with external guest speakers will provide a framework to explore bigger questions about the ways in which the archive has been critiqued, problematised and de-centred in a range of academic disciplines, cultural contexts and professional settings. Examining topics like ‘spontaneous’ community archives, activism and archival practices, as well as what it means to decolonise the imperial archive, the programme aims to highlight the extent to which differing conceptual approaches and methods can further enhance the generative possibilities of interdisciplinarity, which is central to the postgraduate research culture of the Centre for Memory, Narrative and Histories at Brighton.

Conflux website: https://technearchiveconflux.wordpress.com/

Upcoming events: 25th November, Spontaneous memorials and community-building archives

Previous Confluxes

The Object of Research; a process-led residency enquiry into method of artist-researchers

Led by Professor Rebecca Fortnum (Royal College of Art)

In his essay ‘Sonic Thought’ Christoph Cox poses an important conundrum for researchers with a material practice. He writes, ‘How might one ….. allow the object to speak, put it on an equal footing with philosophical thinking, permit it to generate concepts rather than solely to be subject to them?’ (Cox, 2015:123) Most research symposia privilege the word, that is they are usually based on the sharing of written accounts of research. When artworks and artefacts are present it is almost always as image rather than as material – referred to in secondary forms such a photographs or other digital forms in presentations. The Object of Research will trial a form of sharing research in progress by creating a space for artist-researchers to come together to make, allowing access to material forms of research not often possible within research forums. This symposium, a week-long residency for artist-researchers, expands upon conventional means of knowledge exchange by developing an experimental strand of practice-based thinking into the discussion, as participants come together to explore and formulate strategies for arts practice-based methodologies. It will be led by Professor Rebecca Fortnum (RCA) and Dr Chant Faust (RCA) and advised by Professor Sonia Boyce (UAL) and Professors Fran Lloyd (Kingston) with Cumbria Institute of the Arts in July 2018.

Geohumanities Summer School: Listening (to) Field, Voice and Body

Led by Dr Sasha Engelmann (Royal Holloway), Dr Sofie Narbed (Royal Holloway), Dr Cecilie Sachs-Olsen (Royal Holloway), Dr. Mark Peter Wright (University of the Arts, London), and Prof. Angus Carlyle (University of the Arts, London).

The GeoHumanities Summer School offers training for doctoral research that cultivates practices of listening to the field, the voice and the body: how might an enhanced practice of listening to field sites, human voices and bodily states inform and sharpen doctoral research? How can such insights be absorbed and mobilized in research practice and pedagogy?

The Summer School addresses these questions through a one week residency in Bude, Cornwall (in Summer 2019), and through three preparatory workshops in London. In addition to its historic natural beauty and geological features, Bude is the location of the largest “listening station” in the United Kingdom. As such, it provokes us in our engagements with the practice of listening, and provides the perfect setting for students to immerse themselves in one of the three core training strands, focused on listening to the FIELD, the VOICE or the BODY. These three strands provide training in:

techniques of recording and amplifying site-based, geographical phenomena

the analysis of sonic material as a source of information, inspiration and investigation

interview techniques focusing on the politics of listening

interview analysis from the perspective of storylistening

techniques for developing bodily attentiveness and embodied forms of listening

the analysis of bodily experience as a way of knowing