Tidalectic unmapping and the performance of African diasporic imagination in the repertory of Katherine Dunham

This paper foregrounds imagination to consider how African Diasporic conditions converge with choreographic expression. The analysis “un/maps” dominant understandings of the choreographic process of mid-twentieth century African American choreographer-anthropologist Katherine Dunham by expanding Kamau E. Brathwaite’s (1993) concept of Tidalectics beyond the Caribbean to the wider African Diaspora and a distinctly Caribbean comprehension of Diasporic imagination. Utilizing datasets and visualizations created by the project Dunham’s Data: Katherine Dunham and Digital Methods for Dance Historical Inquiry the paper traces how the concept of Brazil is imagined and reimagined within Dunham’s archive from 1937-1962. In doing so, it considers the complex positionality of Dunham as both a pioneering minoritized woman navigating the politics of race, gender, and financial precarity and as someone who yielded their imperial privilege as a US citizen through their career to bring nuance to Dunham's narrative as a canonical dance figure

Experiencing the Historical Record: A Psychosocial/Psychodynamic Method for Working with Archival Materials

In this chapter, we propose that an acknowledgement of subjectivity in archival work cannot ignore the ways in which our psychology, experiences, and emotional reactions shape, in productive ways, our engagement with specific types of archival material. The formulation of our interdisciplinary method involves contributions from records specialists at The National Archives, mental health professionals, academics, and participants as co-researchers. Combining autoethnographic and arts-based methods, our group work is conducted within the parameters of a psychotherapeutically-contained space aimed at creating opportunities for reflection that honour the place of emotions in archival research. Practices and activities are mobilised to help process reactions to archival documents that capture past traumas. Responses have included rage, grief, memories of both individual and collective trauma, and embodied reactions. The theories of psychoanalysis are mobilized – under the supervision of psychotherapists and psychosocial researchers – to facilitate understanding and frame tentative interpretations. Such an interdisciplinary method is not without its challenges – including the added value of such an approach when compared to other archival practices – and these will be discussed further. In developing this method, our intention is not only to create greater space for the place of emotions in archival research, but to break down barriers preventing more robust public engagement while offering to archive professionals and historians tools and theoretical frameworks to enrich the histories they tell. This could include the mobilisation of arts-based methods to give voice to the emotions encountered and the development of genosociograms to complement and deepen an understanding of the researcher’s motivations and journey into archival materials

Jake Elwes: Queering Artificial Intelligence with Deepfake Drag

An article explore the work of artist Jake Elwes, in particular their work Zizi: Queering The Dataset, produced in relation to the Among the Machines Exhibition at the Zabludowicz Collection (2022)

Hello Stranger: East London Exhibition

Hello Stranger: East London (Society of British Theatre Designers' National Exhibition of UK Design for Performance 2019-2023) featured a curated selection of regional talent, celebrating the work of theatre designers and highlighting the critical role that design played in the success of a production. It was co-curated by David Shearing and Khadija Raza. The exhibition was hosted at Queen’s Theatre Hornchurch and celebrated the work of regional designers. Through the exhibition we showcased the dynamic and exciting world of theatre design between process and outcome. As part of the exhibition, we hosted an artist-in-conversation talk between Khadija Raza and David Shearing where we examined the intricacies of the design process and explored the creative decisions that brought "The Flood" to life. It offered a rare opportunity for audiences to get a behind-the-scenes look at the inspiration and collaboration that shaped the design of this emotive new show. We hosted an industry event, with local and regional venue to look at the Future of Design and school’s workshop in design-led and puppetry performance. Exhibition March 2023 A full transcript of the in-conversation is provided here. For more information about the national celebration of design: www.hellostrangernationalexhibition.org.uk

The Aesthetic Exception: Essays on Art, Theatre, and Politics

The aesthetic exception theorises anew the relation between art and politics. It challenges critical trends that discount the role of aesthetic autonomy, to impulsively reassert art as an effective form of social engagement. But it equally challenges those on the flipside of the efficacy debate, who insist that art's politics is limited to a recondite space of 'autonomous resistance'. The book shows how each side of the efficacy debate overlooks art's exceptional status and its social mediations. Mobilising philosophy and cultural theory, and employing examples from visual art, performance, and theatre, it proposes four alternative tests to 'effect' to offer a nuanced account of art's political character. Those tests examine how art relates to politics as a practice that articulates its historical conjuncture, and how it prefigures the 'new' through simulations capable of activating the political life of the spectator

The People's Kitchen

The People’s Kitchen was hosted in Rainham, a small town in the east of London in March 2023. It brought together local people, community groups and organisations to cook, eat and converse together. The project brought together local people, community groups, and organisations to serve over 500 bowls of locally produced soup and provided a space to engage in meaningful conversations about the things that nurture us. The project was more than just a pop-up food kitchen. It offered a space of hope and togetherness where different groups and demographics could co-inhabit the environment. The People’s Kitchen provided a cultural hub right on the town’s high street and helped pose new questions about the role of arts spaces beyond that of galleries, theatres, museums, and libraries. Through an open-call, over 30 interested local people and activists joined a workshop in Rainham to imagine and discuss the project together, building local connections between councillors, food banks, religious organisations, and youth services. From this, we devised how the project would look, what events we could stage and asked what does Rainham need? One of the unique aspects of The People’s Kitchen was that it enabled all different groups to exist within the same art experience. The project examined how material design might foster the conditions to bring different group of people together. The design brief was to provide a sense of quality and care, mixing class-based references - create something that was both humble and inviting. The People’s Kitchen featured pop-up events, including a young people’s dinner, where teenagers from the Rainham Royals youth group worked with chef Megha Kochhar Arora from CREM Kitchen to serve up a tasty meal for adults. The young people did the cooking and the hosting, inviting their adult guests to question where they saw themselves in five years. The role reversal was designed to offer a sense of empowerment for the young people. A special event was also held where members of the public could nominate someone incredible to attend a special Mindful, Food, and Art evening hosted by Bluerskies community producers Charlotte Trower and Lucy McDonald. The People’s Kitchen is an example of how art can bring people together to inspire social change and promote environmental and social justice. The project encouraged attendees to slow down, connect with each other, and imagine new futures. The success of The People’s Kitchen demonstrates the power of community-led initiatives and the importance of bringing people together to create new types of art spaces in the heart of our communities and how we have better public conversation. The People’s Kitchen was a space where people from different socio-economic backgrounds, including those who were homeless, were able to find physical nourishment, while families were able to stop and take a moment out, and commuters returning from work offered a space to decompress. The project explored questions about co-creation and food ecologies within community contexts, showing the potential of art to bring people together and spark social change

The body is not (only) a metaphor: rethinking embodiment in the digital humanities

Book synopsis: A cutting-edge view of the digital humanities at a time of global pandemic, catastrophe, and uncertainty Where do the digital humanities stand in 2023? Debates in the Digital Humanities 2023 presents a state-of-the-field vision of digital humanities amid rising social, political, economic, and environmental crises; a global pandemic; and the deepening of austerity regimes in U.S. higher education. Providing a look not just at where DH stands but also where it is going, this fourth volume in the Debates in the Digital Humanities series features both established scholars and emerging voices pushing the field's boundaries, asking thorny questions, and providing space for practitioners to bring to the fore their research and their hopes for future directions in the field. Carrying forward the themes of political and social engagement present in the series throughout, it includes crucial contributions to the field-from a vital forum centered on the voices of Black women scholars, manifestos from feminist and Latinx perspectives on data and DH, and a consideration of Indigenous data and artificial intelligence, to essays that range across topics such as the relation of DH to critical race theory, capital, and accessibility

Kings, queens, monsters and things: digital drag performance and queer moves in artificial intelligence (AI)

The Zizi Project is a series of connected art and performance pieces created by artist Jake Elwes in collaboration with Me The Drag Queen and members of London’s drag performance scene. The works – currently Zizi: Queering the Dataset (2019), Zizi & Me (2020; ongoing), and The Zizi Show (2020) – sit at the intersection of drag performance and Artificial Intelligence (AI), playing with and queering facial recognition software, deepfake technologies, and Machine Learning algorithms. I consider The Zizi Project as an example of work at the vanguard of an emergent field of queer AI performance. The project intervenes in complex conversations surrounding AI and Machine Learning, including the lack of representation of diverse identities and communities in datasets used to train these systems and the complexity of creating datasets which include queer and trans bodies and identities. However, in aiming to use drag performance to expose and demystify these complex technological systems to audiences, I propose that queerer forms of art making and performance emerge that push at the boundaries of both drag and the technologies used. Ultimately, The Zizi Project articulates drag and queer futures where the digital and the actual interact in increasingly complex ways to explore notions of diversity, inclusion, and access that speak to fundamental questions of what counts as drag, what counts as queer, and, indeed, what count as human

THE FUTURE OF JUNGIAN PSYCHO-SOCIAL STUDIES: AKIRA, GRETA THUNBERG AND ARCHETYPAL THEMATIC ANALYSIS (ATA)

This paper establishes a specifically Jungian and Post-Jungian contribution to psycho-social studies. It locates the position an analytical psychological approach may occupy within existing debates before turning its attention to developing archetypal thematic analysis (ATA) as a psycho-social method that may be employed in qualitative research. Using 2019 as a focal point, the authors argue that an archetypal thematic analysis of texts related to two ‘events’ – the release of the 30th anniversary edition DVD of Akira and the announcement of Greta Thunberg as Time magazine’s ‘person of the year’ – supports the assertion that the archetype of the child has been constellated. This paper proposes that a Jungian hermeneutic may usefully be mobilised to bring structure to a dataset, and to deepen the researcher’s interpretation of the data. Utilising Jung’s theory of synchronicity, and extending Main’s (2006) argument for a synchronistic approach to a reading of contemporary events, where appropriate, the authors provide an interpretation of the data’s possible meaning