PuSh Critical Ideas
The SCA's Peter Dickinson, who is also the Director of SFU’s Institute for Performance Studies, has organized and will moderate a series of FREE talks as part of 2019's PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, with support from SFU Faculty of Communication, Art and Technology and SFU Woodward’s Cultural Programs. Called the PuSh Festival Critical Ideas Series, the series will bring "together artists, critics, scholars and audiences to discuss formal, social and ideological issues affecting performance practice and reception today." Here's the full schedule:
Panel 1: Sound + Space
Friday, January 18
2:30-4:00 pm
Djavad Mowafaghian World Art Centre
SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts
Join curator and sound artist Aki Onda for a talk on contemporary Japanese sound art, as exemplified by three distinct artists in PuSh’s 2019 program: ASUNA, Marginal Consort, and Tetsuya Umeda. Their work combines the use of unconventional and self-made instruments with analogue equipment, with the visual arrangement of the objects itself becoming a “score.” Combined with the individual architecture and acoustics of the site, sound transforms and creates space, guiding the flow and development of the performance itself.
Featured Speakers: Aki Onda, followed by conversation with Kazuo Imai (Marginal Consort) and ASUNA (100 Keyboards)
Moderator: Peter Dickinson, Director, SFU’s Institute for Performance Studies
Panel 2: Arts + Access
Friday, January 25
2:30-4:00 pm
Djavad Mowafaghian World Art Centre
SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts
As an ongoing Festival thematic concern, we ask: How is accessibility changing the way we create, curate and experience art? What do we have to gain when we re-frame our perception of disability from one of limitation to one of possibilities? For this edition of the conversation, we centre the experience of d/Deaf artists and practitioners, asking how intersectionality can be used as a tool to build bridges and address the system of inclusion.
Featured Speakers: Dawn Jani Birley, Performer, and Ravi Jain, Director (Prince Hamlet); Denise Read (ASQL Entertainment); and Jan Derbyshire, Playwright and Performer
Moderator: Peter Dickinson, Director, SFU’s Institute for Performance Studies
Panel 3: Ethics + Consent
Friday, February 1, 10:30-12:00 pm
Djavad Mowafaghian Cinema
SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts
Performance-based practice involves relationships between people, whether amongst artists and practitioners creating and producing the work itself, or between artists and audiences. How do we reconcile with structures of power that shape these relationships? For this panel, we discuss the ethics of consent and care in performance and curatorial practice, reflecting on a range of social, political and geographic contexts.
Featured Speakers: Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory and Evalyn Parry, Performers (Kiinalik: These Sharp Tools); Lee Su-Feh (Artistic Director, batter opera); and Victoria Hunt, Choreographer/Performer (Copper Promises: Hinemihi Haka)
Guest Moderator: Renellta Arluk, Director of Indigenous Arts, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity
