Research

2022
Continuing the direction of enquiry that began in 2019  ‘Geologies’ (working title) begins its initial research stage. Drawing on a political-ecology approach, the project addresses the socio-historical layers implicit in the geologies and geographies of the Glasgow area, the Clyde waters and the isle of Arran – sites that are variously stratified in their geologies and in their layers of Empire and imperialism. I’m approaching video, movement, text and sound as ‘layers’ that might reflect, through poetic means, the dynamic and complex relationships between the natural world, deep time and the political and historical narratives that are (un)told.

2020 – 2021
MANIFESTOS from times of CRISIS

This project was conceived as a direct response to the global pandemic COVID19; it is inevitably informed by the research undertaken through 2019. It operates through dialogue towards consensual decision-making. It enacts collective social practices that hold differences while striving for agreement – within the particular context of a specific collection of people creating a group manifesto in these times. Project website

2019
From early 2019 I have been immersed in a period of reflection and re-prioritising fuelled by the climate crisis and associated socio-political issues: the dilemma of living and breathing now; in this time; in this place. While my artistic concerns continue to be with material-relational processes, with qualities of attention and perception, with quietly radical ways of being together, a differently inflected quickening has emerged driven by the question: what kind of art can be made in the urgency of these times?

From late 2019, and as part of the next phase of Breath Pieces, emerging works are informed by research into climate change that includes a critical-historical perspective on Empire and a concern towards decolonizing narratives of the crisis and of the Anthropocene. Works in early stage of development went into hiatus due to COVID19. [And now inform developments from 2022.]

2018
Breath Pieces

From early 2018 beginning a period of extended creative research into the material and energetic qualities of breath towards the development of a collection of works that take their impetus in the actuality of the breathing breath. Supported by Creative Scotland with commission from Tramway alongside partners Cove Park, The Work Room, City Moves and Scottish Dance Theatre.
Breath Pieces immerses in the experiencing of time, performing a quiet and sensorial resistance to notions of time as contained measure – a notion that equates time ‘spent’ to markets, to exchange, to consumption. Breath Pieces breathes time’s duration.’  Breath Pieces website

Figures Series (2016-2018)
a performance and research project funded by Arts Council England and Dance4. Figures Series addresses choreographic works that operate across and between dance and visual art, works that seep into the public realm and works that invite the experience – or imaginary possibility – of more radical and political ways of being together (even when quietly so). It includes participatory performance works, new choreographic scores for public use, artist interviews, reviews of choreographic works and a collection of articles that questions what 21st century choreography is and what it can do.

Figure Series has own dedicated website www.figuresseries.com
link to articles
link to interviews

Artist in residence on Cultural Leadership and the Place of the Artist (2016)
The project is co-ordinated by the On The Edge research team – Anne Douglas, Chris Fremantle and Jonathan Price, Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen, and organized in partnership with The Clore Leadership Programme, Creative Scotland and ENCATC (European Network on Cultural Management and Policy). This is an Art and Humanities Research Council Impact and Engagement project that follows on from earlier research undertaken by the team relating to Artist as Leader (Douglas & Fremantle) and Discourses of Cultural Leadership (Price).

As artist in residence through 2016 I am developing scores that respond to ongoing discussions during a series of four seminars. The scores aim to speak to the issues around leading, following, sharing and producing, and to bring an experiential sense of making in the world (or arriving at decisions) through relational processes.

On The Edge Blog

Publications
‘Contemporaneity and micropolitics in the processes of Perception Frames’ (2016) in the journal Choreographic Practices, Vol 7:1

Processual constructions: towards a non-representational poetics of choreography (2015) PhD thesis, Middlesex University available here

Perception Frames: choreographic scores for practice and performance (2014) Middlesex University Press ISBN 978 1 85924 3343

what remains and is to come: a document (2014) Middlesex University Press ISBN 978 1 85924 332

‘Perfoming processes: thinking worlds into being’ (2013) in Conference Proceedings How Performance Thinks Conference London 2012, a conference co-organized by the PSi Performance and Philosophy working group and the practice research unit at Kingston University.
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Artist Pages I ‘what remains and is to come’ (2012) with Katrina Brown, text and digital images in Performance Research: on ecology Vol 17:4

Artist Pages II ‘what remains and is to come’ (2012) with Katrina Brown, text and digital images in Feminist and Scholar Online, Vol 10: 3 2012 issue editor Jonathan Beller
view

Presentations and Performance Lectures (selected)
ADiE (Artistic Doctorates in Europe) an Erasmus+ Research Project – Research Presentation at Talking Thinking Dancing Symposium at IC4C (International Centre for Choreography) 2017. My PhD is a case study within the ADiE project.

Choreography and interdisciplinarity a presentation contextualising dance and choreography in an expanded field prior to own and other artist talks at Fictional Matters a symposium curated by Colette Saddler at Centre Contemporary Arts Glasgow December 2016

After a non-representational poetics a presentation at Glasgow University Seminar series May 2016 

Choreography as a contemporary art form a provocation for a panel discussion at Tramway’s Turner Prize Thursday event ‘introducing the visitor audience’ – an event linked to Tramway’s hosting of the Turner Prize, Glasgow, January 2016.

What happens when we bring the words artist and researcher together … a performance lecture, programmed by Dance4, Friday 19th June 2015, Nottingham Lakeside Arts.
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Thinking, sensing and attention in ‘Perception Frames’ at the symposium Questioning the Contemporary in 21st Century British Dance Practices at Leeds Metropolitan University, July 2014

Theorizing in practice: choreographic enquiry as method, choreographic work as outcome a paper presentation at New Visions on Dance, a symposium organized by the Society for Dance Research in collaboration with Dance at Middlesex and DanceHE, Middlesex University, October 2013

Activating processes: perceptual immediacy in choreographic event making a paper presentation at Dance and Somatics Conference, Coventry University, July 2013

Legacies, genealogies and possible futures a performance lecture at Nottdance Festival, Nottingham on works by Bock & Vincenzi (UK), Xavier Le Roy (France) and Thomas Lehmen (Germany) which were programmed at Nottdance, Bonnington Gallery, Nottingham, March 2013

Material Action Image: collaborative processes in ‘what remains and is to come’ with Katrina Brown at Actionable Image: Agency of Image, Performance of Body, Apparatus of Spectating Symposium organized by BADco in Zagreb, Croatia, 16-17 March 2012
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Sense and Self: a collaborative performance lecture with Steve Fossey at Performing Research Creative Exchanges Conference, Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London, January 2012

Choreography as a practice of living together at The Future of Arts Research Conference, British Library, November 2011