Practice-Research: Methodological Approaches and Outcomes

Speakers:
Professor Janis Jefferies, Goldsmiths, University of London
Gilles Massot, Faculty of Fine Arts, Media & Creative Industries, LASALLE
Dr. Stephanie Burridge, Independent Scholar, Singapore
Qing Sheng Ang, Faculty of Fine Arts, Media & Creative Industries, LASALLE

Transmissions: Critical Tactics for Making and Communicating Research
Professor Janis Jefferies

Art, and increasingly the convergence of performance or lived-based works, acts as a provocation; it operates as the conscience of a society, it produces discomfort and brings its audience into crisis (Bolt et al, 2010). For artists this discomfort and crisis represents precisely art’s benefit, both to the participants and to the wider community. Nonetheless, performance can mean different things to different groups and peoples. On the one hand Rosanna Raymond’s SaVAge K’lub (2010-ongoing) is an installation space that is activated by various K’lub members, Pacific artists and local communities over the course of an exhibition, here APT8 (Asia Pacific Triennial, Queensland Gallery of Art, Brisbane, 2016). Samoan understanding of space as ‘live’, provokes and performs a 19th century Gentlemen’s London Club in new configurations of spoken word,performance art works and a ‘behind the scenes’ provocation of ethnographic museum exhibits that come to life in a cacophony of frenzied automaton encounters.

Whampoa to Provence: Research as Life Narrative
Gilles Massot

In 1844-45 the French custom officer Jules Itier produced a ground-breaking body of photographic work while travelling around Asia as a member of the Lagrené mission, the mission that signed the Treaty of Whampoa, the first diplomatic treaty between China and France. The discovery of this body of work was part of the photography history class I was then starting to develop. This life changing happenstance took me in the footsteps of this compatriot, sending me all the way back to our common Provençal origins while asking me to revisit the part of the world I had called home for three decades, eventually making academic research, artistic practice and life narrative come together as one whole identity.

Cross Threads and Pathways: Evolving Asian Contemporary Dance
Dr Stephanie Burridge

The term ‘hybridity’ in dance could refer to a post-colonial hegemony with negative connotations. An implied mixing and amalgamation of elements originating from the dancers’ cultural background and training (for example, Indian dancers and Bharatanatyam or Thai dancers and Khon), with globalised dominant western forms of contemporary, classical ballet or hip hop for instance, could result in a submersion, and submission, of the originalform. In the performances around the region, however, hybridity is empowering embracing exploration, curiosity and risk taking. Asian choreographers work through their embodied cultural ‘memories’ and multiple dance traditions that co-exist and merge not only with western contemporary dance forms but with dance practices from across the region. Innovations in movement vocabulary, juxtaposed with cultural and personal narratives and storytelling traditions, underpins radical changes in Asian contemporary dance.

Cultural Authenticity in the Animated Cinema of Singapore
Qing Sheng Ang

Despite the critical acclaim of Singapore’s live-action cinema with the success of films like Ilo Ilo and The Apprentice, the notion of a 'Singaporean animation' remains vague. This presentation will shed light on the LASALLE-funded practice-based research that qualitatively analyzes local films in search of cultural indicators