Beyond the body

Course Description: The life class is a space for the practice of observational drawing from the live human body, much revered yet often a neglected training for the contemporary artists. The production of the life drawing remains the focus, however this workshop will also explore the unique environment of the life class as a construction of power relations and hierarchies of knowledge. Whilst working within the conventions of a practical life class, the role of the model, student, tutor, arrangement of studio equipment and the drawing process itself are considered as potential equivalences to the methodologies used in collaboration, performance and other forms of documentation. Throughout the workshop, the life class is reconfigured to encompass alternative artistic intentions and outcomes. Highlighting the problems of relational aesthetics and socially engaged art practice, by simply considering what a body will and will not do under these unique circumstances. Course Goals: The student will begin to develop an awareness of the issues relating to performance and participation of bodies, their own and others. The course will provide critical tools to think and challenge conventional modes of art practice by working tactically within them. Part of the Transart Institute's MFA Programme Summer Residency curriculum. Transart Institute is the International MFA and PhD Creative Practice Programs with Intensives in New York and Berlin, individual advisement and critique groups wherever you live and work. Accredited by Plymouth University, UK.</p

Perfectionism and Chinese Gifted Learners

Over the past two decades a wealth of research data on perfectionism has drawn increased attention to the nature and impact of perfectionism on many aspects of student development. Much of the research has explored perfectionism in the gifted student population, but few studies have considered how perfectionism could be perceived differently in students of non-Caucasian descent and how it may have different impacts on their learning, development, and adjustment. In view of the apparent cultural divide in the research literature, and the emphasis on pursuing perfection within Chinese culture, this article reviews studies that do address perfectionism in Chinese gifted students. The aim was to offer a cultural perspective for understanding perfectionism in this population and to locate pertinent information to assist identification, counseling interventions, and future research.postprin

Connectedness and life skills development for all children

postprin

The tactical life model : reconfiguring the Chinese male body in performance and participatory art practice.

This examination of recent art from China argues that the artist is increasingly returning the gaze, in which the seemingly problematic representation of the subservient body is a self-aware and nuanced presentation. Explored through the trials of a “British-Chinese” male artist’s tentative re-framing of his own body and its reproduction

Radical theory for group semiautomata

A Kurosh-Amitsur radical theory is developed for group semiautomata. Radical theory stems from ring theory, it is apt for deriving structure theorems and for a comparative study of properties. Unlikely to conventional radical theories, the radical of a group semiautomaton need not be a subsemiautomaton, so the whole scene will take place in a suitably constructed category. The fundamental facts of the theory are described in § 2. A special feature of the theory, the existence of complementary radicals, is discussed in § 3. Restricting the theory to additive automata, which still comprise linear sequential machines, in § 4 stronger results will be achieved, and also a (sub)direct decomposition theorem for certain semisimple group semiautomata will be proved. Examples are given at appropriate places. The paper may serve also as a framework for future structural investigations of group semiautomata

A body of relations: reconfiguring the life class

The established practice of drawing from the life model elides the complexity of the life model in relation to gender, race, social status, sexuality, and identity. As a pedagogical methodology, the assumptions and protocols of the life class enforce separation and silence between the life model, artist and tutor, and uphold a framework of oppression1. Further, this form of education is widely viewed as outmoded, neglected and of little relevance to contemporary art practice. As a practicing artist, I want to re-examine the relationship between the life class and the theoretical positions of participatory and performance art practice. Theoretically, the challenge of this research, to the established practice of the life class is premised upon several concepts. Firstly, the “dematerializing of the art object”2 the process rather than art object as the primary site of the artist’s creative output. Secondly, the concept of ‘performance’ art is explored where the artist’s body becomes the potential primary site of the artwork. Thirdly, Bourriaud’s ‘relational aesthetic’, which posits other people’s participation and engagement with the artwork’s “interhuman relations”3 as the principle by which an artwork is mediated. In this practice-led research, I examine the notion of the artwork as ‘event’, and the subsequent ‘art object’ as document, artifact, or ‘trace’4 of the artist’s and other participant’s performativity; whether invited, co-opted or usurped into the artwork. The research is undertaken through the production of a portfolio of original new artworks and their reflection and written analysis. I examine the following lines of inquiry5: 1 Freire, Paulo, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, translated by Bergman-Ramos, Myra, Penguin Books, edition 1996 2 Lippard, Lucy. Six Years: The Dematerialization of The Art Object from 1966 to 1972. University of California Press Ltd, London, 1997 3 Bourriaud, Nicolas, Relational Aesthetics, Translated by Pleasance, Simon & Woods, Fronza, with the participation of Copeland, Mathieu, Les Presses Du Reel, 2002 4 Benjamin, Walter, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction in Illuminations, Pimlico, London 1999 5 Nelson, Robin, Practice as Research in the Arts, Principals, Protocols, Pedagogies, Resistances, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, New York, 2013, p.26 - 4 - 1) To understand the implication of a process-orientated ‘performance’ and ‘participatory’ art practice to challenge the conventions of the life class 2) To explore the subsequent effects of this reconfiguration of the life class on our understandings of the role of the life model, and their subjectivity that the conventional life class elides 3) To examine the role and status of performance and participatory art’s documentation process on the life class, and the life drawing 4) To reconsider the educational possibilities of performance and participatory art practice on the teaching of the life class. I adopt a recognized multi-mode approach to evidencing this inquiry using videos and photographs, qualitative interview, historical research and strategies of display6. My research develops a theoretical trajectory to assert that contemporary art practice enables a return to the life class, but to a reconfigured life class that has learnt from the issues of power, play and subjectivity examined in this practice and commentary. The reconfigured life class provides a performative, discursive, social space to empower the life model to actively engage in the production of his/her own self-image. In addition the research re-frames the life class as a site in which the discourses of contemporary art as ‘relational’ and ‘performative’ can reach its apotheosis as a de-materialized performance event, whose trace exists in the dispersed materiality of the artist’s body and whose silenced subject, the life model, becomes a full individual subject

Association between cortical hyperexcitability and visual disturbances – evidence from behaviour and electroencephalogram

This thesis presents four studies that sought to examine the presence and role of cortical hyperexcitability underlying aberrant / anomalous perceptions in neurotypical and self-reported migraine groups. The current thesis developed new screening tools for assessing and conceptualising cortical hyperexcitability leading to essential advancements in our understanding of its presence and its role in different forms of anomalous experience. In chapter II, the latent structure of a proxy measure was uncovered and constructed to reflect cortical hyperexcitability, namely Cortical Hyperexcitability Index – II (CHi-II), by conducting an exploratory factor analysis on the behavioural data that indicates the frequency and intensity of the 300 non-clinical participants’ everyday life anomalous visual experiences. In chapter III, a revised pattern glare test was employed to investigate a direct linkage between everyday life visual stress symptoms and pattern glare. The quantitative analyses were implemented by exploring the statistical relationships between the scores of the extracted factors on CHi-II and pattern glare scores and on a set of migraine patients and healthy controls. In chapter IV, where the gratings typically used in a pattern glare test were revised as visual stimuli with a VEP paradigm. The association between cortical hyperexcitability and pattern glare was examined by electrophysiological measurement. Here the early (0 – 200 ms) and late VEP (300 –700 ms) components are compared between the groups of self-reported migraineurs and neurotypical participants. Finally, aiming to isolate the effect of cortical hyperexcitability from migraine, the above VEP study on a clinically normal sample was replicated in chapter V. In order to observe how cortical hyperexcitability may influence the VEPs, non-clinical subjects were split into hyperexcitable and non-hyperexcitable based on their pattern glare scores. The early and late VEP components are, again, compared between these two groups

Evidence for Distinct Clusters of Diverse Anomalous Experiences and Their Selective Association with Signs of Elevated Cortical Hyperexcitability

Visual cortical hyperexcitability (VCH) is an underlying factor for aberrant visual experience. Utilizing an exploratory factor analysis (n=300), study 1 developed a revised proxy screening measure for VCH - the Cortical Hyperexcitability index – II(CHi-II). The result revealed a stable 3-factor solution. Study 2 tested both a migraine group and a control group on the CHi-II with a behavioural task that is known to reflect VCH. The migraine group produced significantly elevated scores two factors of CHi-II. Among the non-migraine group, subjects with high VCH also produced significantly elevated scores on CHi-II compared to those with low VCH. These findings support the utility of CHi-II as an indirect proxy measure for signs of VCH and reveal new categorical distinctions for the nature of the anomalous perceptions. These perceptions may well reflect diverse neurocognitive underpinnings leading to advancements in our understanding of aberrations in conscious experience