Techne Confluxes

A Techne 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

 

Philosophy and Critical Methods

 

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

Led by Dr Mike Rose (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/

 

‘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 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).

 

Scenographics: Acts of worlding

 

Led by Dr Donatella Barbieri (University of the Arts London)

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:

1. Introduction to the potential of scenography and scenographics as a conceptual lens in the interdisciplinary crafting of ‘scenes’, ‘worlds’, and ‘atmospheres’.
2. 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.
3. 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.

 

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?

 

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/

Embodied Health: Monsters, Methods and Creative Practice

Led by Dr Donna McCormack (University of Surrey)

This Conflux explores arts- and humanities-based research, methods and creative practices in the fields of health and medicine. It takes difference and anomalous bodies as its starting point to situate contemporary research, methods and practice in the growing field of monster studies and to address what monster theory may offer to our thinking on health, medicine and technology. The Conflux will give participants the opportunity to explore potentially new creative methods and practices, as well as more traditional analytical and critical approaches, with experts in health-based research and creative health practices. Finally, it will enhance knowledge of interdisciplinary collaborative research across the arts and humanities and medicine and health.

 

Queer Feminist Currents

 

Led by Dr Eleanor Roberts (University of Roehampton)

This queer feminist Conflux series will galvanize and extend an established research culture of queer feminist scholarship and practice in the arts and humanities, through a series of events aimed at graduate students at Techne institutions. Each event will be focused on the reading of key contemporary queer feminist texts (‘texts’ here includes a number of possible forms including scholarly texts, artworks, and other materials) and workshops on politically urgent key topics with interdisciplinary relevance. The series will interrogate the key points of convergence and tension in contemporary queer, intersectional feminist and gender studies, decolonial critique, as well as theory and practice as interrelated. A diverse range of speakers will represent queer feminist work across a number of disciplinary areas including critical race theory, visual art and culture, theatre studies, performance studies, dance, philosophy, sociology, history, creative writing, and postcolonial theory. The series will be programmed on a decentering principle, including the vital work of scholars and practitioners of colour and ethnic minorities, spanning a range of geographic and formal spaces. In a queer feminist mode, it will provide a forum for in-depth engagement and exchange about the latest ideas, and conversations between established world-leading figures and early career research and practice.

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

Voices at the Margins

Led by Dr Eugene Michail (University of Brighton)

 The “Voices at the Margins?” summer school offers PhD researchers space to engage critically with theoretical and methodological aspects of their own research that engages with memories, histories and voices ‘at the margins’. It will provide a constructive, reflective and supportive environment for discussions of theoretical and methodological challenges, issues and aspects of the individual research process that are often under-addressed in traditional academic settings. The summer school will be workshop-based and offers a rich opportunity for in-depth discussions about participants’ own research, as well as for an exploration of new state-of-the-art theoretical and methodological approaches in the field, based on participants’ own needs and interests. It will centre around the following four key components:

• Discussion of participants’ own research on memories, histories and voices ‘at the margins’
• Workshops on cultural memory theory and methodology related to ‘voices at the margins’
• A keynote presentation on theories and/or methodologies of researching marginal ‘voices’
• An excursion to a museum or exhibition
  

Over the past decade, a cross-disciplinary “memory boom” has accentuated the significance of memories of the past for the present and future. In this context, we aim to specifically explore memory processes related to memories that have been silenced, remain unheard or at the ‘margins’ of society, while also questioning how we define these ‘margins’, gathering PhD students from different disciplines.

Conflux website: https://voicesatmargins.wordpress.com/
Book in here

 

Blame and Responsibility for Historical Wrongs, New Perspectives from the Humanities and Arts

Led by Prof. Veronica Rodriguez-Blanco (University of Surrey)

It is crucial that liberal societies confront questions of responsibility for historical wrongs. When we consider our own actions as self-determined and autonomous agents, we see ourselves as responsible for our actions. By contrast, what we see as historical wrongs were often committed within principles of conduct seen as acceptable at the time. How do we reconcile these two perspectives? This Conflux guides PGRs through the questions: What are the grounds of responsibility and blame for historical wrongs? How does practical reasoning engage with imagination, moral worth and moral knowledge? Do we need a wider conception of self (different from ‘autonomous agent’) to make sense of blame and responsibility for historical wrongs? In what ways can the humanities and arts make intelligible different conceptions of the self? Moreover, how can literary and musical works help us to confront the past in imaginative and creative ways? The Conflux takes the form of two seminars (each delivered by a renowned scholar), two interactive workshops with visiting creative practitioners and giving PGRs opportunities to present, and two musical performances with accompanying roundtables. It enables participating PGRs to engage with urgent and cross-disciplinary issues via creative means.

 

Speaking Of Her

Led by Prof. Rebecca Fortnum (Royal College of Art)

The Speaking of Her Conflux is a feminist research network that bring together artists, writers, curators, and scholars investigating women’s creative legacies. The network aims to retrieve the creative contributions made by women throughout history and in the contemporary moment via a series of events that emphasise the critical importance of feminist, arts-based methods of research. This network will generate discussion and ideas-exchange around the ways in which past and present voices can come into contact through creative forms of research, and why this is important now. The events aim to reanimate discourse around voice, experiment, form, and sexual difference that characterised earlier feminist work, by exploring and developing creative research methods from feminist perspectives, including four strands of exploration: auto/biographies, fabulation, re-enactment, and correspondence. These methodological strands are the means by which it becomes possible to ‘speak of her’: women artists and writers buried in archives, but not entirely erased, as well as women whose ‘work’ expands the meanings and manifestations of female creativity. In structuring our research events and activities according to method—rather than medium, genre, or discipline—we will develop a productive dialogue between theory and practice, shaping a newly emerging field of feminist inquiry that foregrounds the relations between art practice and art history.