Different Light Theatre: : Multimodal Practices in Learning-Disabled Theatre

Learning-disabled theatre is often perceived as giving a voice to the voiceless or empowering those marginalised in society. But how can this voice and power avoid becoming co-opted by neoliberal, racial, colonial capital merely to produce the entitled, self-possessed, autonomous individuals that late capitalism needs, but the production of which is destroying the planet? Does the political efficacy of this work consist in the mere presence of learning-disabled artists in these contexts, or is it not rather in the negotiation of the terms of their presence and participation? Interesting answers to these questions emerge in the exploration of the multimodal negotiation of voice, presence, representation and mediation in learning-disabled performance as performance

The Soul of The Masks:: A Journey Through Mah Meri Indigenous Carvings

As part of their rituals, one of the native tribes of Malaysia, the Mah Meri, carve wooden masks and statues. These masks and statues are used in prayer rituals and ceremonies, and as a way of passing on the culture and heritage of the tribe. The carving of these artefacts was studied to learn about the Mah Meri way of life. With the help of photogrammetry, we digitised the Mah Meri masks and statues and wrote down the stories behind each one. These folktales say a lot about how the Mah Meri treat nature and how much they value it. From this data set, we wanted to see how augmented reality, installations and transmedia storytelling could be used to disseminate and preserve Mah Meri culture and history. We tried to bring the stories that were told to us back to life in a visual format, using the screens on our everyday devices. We turned the oral stories into digital sketches, which were then animated and displayed in an installation. Then, those narratives were changed so that the Mah Meri’s stories can be used in augmented reality story books. We want to show and share this multimedia representation of their folklore with the help of the digital container we have placed them in. The initial aim of the research is to immerse the wider public in the culture and heritage of Mah Meri. In disseminating this “research–creation,” we also want to see what this multimedia output could give back to the Mah Meri community and help them keep their communal knowledge alive and pass it on to the next generation

Negotiating Different Worlds and Diverse Cultural Legacies Through Applied Creative Practice in a Situated Learning Project: Hlakanyana 2022

Prism-like, the 2022 Hlakanyana project at the University of Johannesburg’s (UJ) Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture (FADA) refracted both clear and shadowy issues embedded in arts, culture and pedagogy in a society grappling with decolonisation. Participation in the project indicated that transformation imperatives have been compounded by the socio-economic consequences of a two-year lockdown. On 8 March, some 300 masked second-year students, seated in Keorapetse William Kgositsile Theatre auditorium, were introduced to a project that has come to be known as Theatre 101. Daunted and uncertain, they, like similar groups before them, were confronting requirements of designing for an unfamiliar medium amplified by the logistical implications of group work at the start of returning to face-to-face learning. Initial responses at the briefing session indicated skepticism towards an undertaking in which multiplicities converged. My role throughout, as professional designer and academic, was that of participant–observer, and this reflexive report documents the spectrum of intertwined issues that emerged in the UJ initiative rather than pursing a single aspect for sustained interrogation

Editorial: ‘multi-’

After a hiatus caused by the successive lockdowns of the Covid pandemic in 2020, Junctures 22 returns with a full issue that amply lives up to the journal’s mission of encouraging discussion across boundaries, whether disciplinary, geographic, cultural, social, or economic. The call for submissions invited contributors to reflect on how the notion of ‘multi-’ could prompt the ability to perceive the world in new ways, to reveal new truths that are hidden in plain sight, to make connections between seemingly unrelated phenomena, and to generate solutions. This invitation was prompted by the assertion that as the world around us becomes increasingly complex and as the tensions between technological advancement and environmental degradation increase, solutions for a sustainable future are only going to be found through collaborative approaches that are open to paradigms and knowledge systems that are other than those that have sustained the status quo

Navigating Knowledge Frameworks at the Intercultural Interface

As we emerge not altogether unscathed in 2022 into what optimistically might be called a postpandemic world, we are confronted by the pressing need to address global and climate instabilities against a general backdrop of complexity. Potential solutions must be balanced against environmental and societal concerns that cannot take for granted that any system is somehow isolated. Here then is the crux of new materialist and post-humanist approaches – a shift “away from Kant”1 and away it seems, from humancentric understandings of who, or what, has agency in the world. Despite acknowledging the agencies of non-human others, such as electrical grids2 and quantum entanglement,3 or proposing new speculative realist frameworks by which to engage with such agentic capacities,4 finding workable solutions within such dynamics remains stubbornly difficult. What does become clear, at least, is that these Eurocentric traditions, arising from the European Enlightenment project, have not served the environment particularly well. Newtonian physics can no longer claim mastery over the tangible world through recourse to universal laws acting in isolation, and liberal humanism is revealed to be underpinned by Eurocentric cultural traditions of human exceptionalism and the rights of the individual exceeding the rights of the collective. As I have argued elsewhere,5 such traditions within the European imaginary arise from Judeo-Christian notions of dominion over the nonhuman and are reinforced by successive bifurcations between nature and culture through Plato/Aristotle-Descartes-Kant metaphysical trajectories

Transdisciplinarity in the Dunedin Art+Science Project

In confronting the realities of the global climate crisis, it seems as if we are living in a narrow window of “useful consciousness.” Responding to and tackling the existential threat of the climate crisis requires transdisciplinary methodologies and cooperation. A series of multidiscipline art and science collaborations in Dunedin, New Zealand, focuses a lens on rapidly changing ecological and social effects as human activity encroaches on our planetary boundaries. Our approach allows for processing of the scientific data in bite-sized, digestible chunks and provides a means for storytelling through visual texts and narrative spaces – a methodology essential to connecting with community values and finding solutions to climate anxieties

Between Democracy and Technocracy: : Ecology as Multidisciplinary Science in the Transpacific Cold War

This paper investigates the circulation of ecological knowledge and practices between North America and Southeast Asia via ecologists’ involvement in the politics of science during the Transpacific Cold War. Historians have documented how American scientists in the early Cold War (1945–1965) faced the contradiction between their apparent ‘freedom’ to conduct research compared to scientists in socialist countries, on the one hand, and the imperative to depoliticise the connection between their research and the military-industrial complex, on the other hand. Historians have also shown how the environmental, civil rights and antiwar movements severely challenged this apolitical science by the late 1960s. The popularisation of ecology and its convergence with environmental politics after the 1970s are often viewed as part of this trend of repoliticising science in North America

Amazing Water — A Physicist’s View

Report from the Art+Water, art and science project 2019.Water is everywhere, familiar and necessary to life. My special interest in water began in 1985, when I started to write computer programs to simulate the appearance of water in ponds and streams to create animation. In 1999, with a group of students, I completed a five-year project to make a short movie1 which featured a waterfall, splashes, and the textures formed by sunlight in a shallow pool. The more I studied the behaviour of water, the more I came to realise that this most ordinary of materials, has the most extraordinary properties among liquids. To understand this idea properly, we must delve into a little atomic physics. This essay is based on a talk given to the Art+Water Project introductory meeting for scientists and artists, early in 2019

Water

EditorialNa Te Po, ko Te AoFrom Eternity, came the universeTana ko Te Ao MaramaThen came the clear lightTana ko Te Ao TuroaThen came the enduring lightTana ko Te Kore Te WhiwhiaThen the void unattainableTana ko Te Kore Te RaweaThen the void intangibleTana ko Te Kore Te TamauaThen the void unstableTana ko Te Kore Te MatuaThen the void that allowed for existenceTana ko MakuThen came moistureThe incantation above, from the indigenous peoples of Southern New Zealand, shows the creation of water as the progenitor for all life. It is an essential part of life, requiring careful management to maintain its quality, quantity and accessibility. We are all charged with its preservation and protection for the benefit and survival of ourselves and all living beings we share this planet with