Nineteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

In a time when everyday life has become increasingly disembodied and uncertain, questions like: Who am I? and How can I express myself? become not only necessary but essential for sustaining meaningful creative expression. I explore the question: How does art enable a living expression of a multifaceted and whole self? The inspiration for this inquiry comes from my personal experiences of healing a shattered, abstract, and dissociated identity by encountering a sacred wholeness in objects that symbolize core facets of the self, using expressive arts-based methods for integrating complex trauma. As a transnational Korean adoptee who felt rootless for much of my life, it was difficult for me to feel tethered to the messiness in myself and in the world. To find grounding, I had to restore the connection to my heart, body, and environment that had been severed at birth. In my case, a black felt bowler hat, mirrors, flowers, and wing dancing are the objects that reflect my own wholeness of self back to me. I am designing a transformative integration process for trauma healing using objects as metaphors to symbolize a multifaceted yet whole self that I am calling Dialogical Persona. As I continue to live this inquiry using the arts-based research method of a/r/tography, I playfully explore and deconstruct each facet of my process through multimodal artmaking captured in video collage essays, dance performances and self-portrait drawings to show the aliveness and sustenance in the words, images, and literal body of work.

Room 307 (College of Education - Building 505) : 2024-05-26 11:55

Bastardized Electoral System

Jonathan Ebute Okewu
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session

The yearning for just and improved political systems in Africa to deliver the dividend of democracy to its populace is clamoured for every now and then. A faulty process that breeds wrong leadership is prevalent. This affects everybody including the artists. This conceptual ceramic venture portrays in artistic fashion some of the elements of bastardization that characterize electioneering process in Africa and how this has contributed to ill-fated leadership styles. Clay is the motto used for conveying this thought and bringing to representativeness. It is a malleable material that yields to manipulation and forming. Clay gives the ceramic artist the “voice” to be able to contribute to issues of national debate and by extension, bring about redress. A process that has been coined in context of this study as “construction and deconstruction of clay forms” has been employed in generating the interrogative ceramic art work. The art work presents a tactile clay version of rot inherent in Africa voting systems. Issues of under-age voting, ghost voters and ballot manipulation have been portrayed via this medium. This work is a pointer that all is not well with the system of elections in Africa. By this work, also, it is a reminder that credible leaders can only emerge from a credible process and not a bastardized process currently ravaging the continent.

Online Asynchronous

Unfolding a Future of Time - Rethinking Art for Sustainability

Haeyoung Youn
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session

This paper examines how art can promote sustainable practices for climate change. Haeyoen Hwang's artworks feature melting glaciers, which are significant contributors to climate change. Going beyond mere abstraction, these works capture the intensity of melting glaciers, reflecting Gilles Deleuze’s concept of the figural. Hwang brings a temporal perspective to the paintings, weaving past, present, and future into a singular narrative. This approach, inspired by Deleuze's time theory, suggests that the present coexists with and is divided by past and future. The work, Born as a Glacier and Fell Asleep as a Star, uses a star to signify glaciers’ history as pure past. Evening Primrose shows glaciers nourishing flowers that thrive at night, depicted in hues that blend with the background, hinting at a future filled with potential. The artworks encourage a remembrance of the future, challenging the typical association of memory with the past. The series includes Don’t Cry, Don’t Melt, Become a Glacier and The Glacier’s Determination, urging a recollection of a future where glaciers form anew. Nietzsche’s idea that memories, fueled by willpower, shape our future actions, underpins this series. The paintings do not just recall past decisions but emphasize the imperative to act on future commitments. Hwang's art echoes Deleuze's idea of “becoming a people to come,” a notion of communal potentiality. The hope is these paintings motivate a proactive stance on climate issues. In essence, by representing a sensible temporality, Hwang’s art envisions sustainability as an active force in shaping what is yet to come.

Seonghee Kang Seminar Room (Hanyang Museum) : 2024-05-24 11:25

Discussing the Theater Pipeline Problem

Eh Den Perlove
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session

Entry into the commercial theater remains highly exclusionary, with structures in place that bar marginalized theater makers from getting their foot in the door. With the average earned salary of a playwright being $25,000-$35,000 annually, including “safety gigs,” it is hard for artists from marginalized groups to sustain themselves long enough to enter the Regional Theater or Broadway pipeline. The purpose of this paper is to explore different techniques organizations have used to break down the barriers to entry for early-career marginalized artists. For example, I work with SheNYC Arts, a nonprofit supporting the work of marginalized gender theater makers, including cis-women, trans and non-binary people. The goal of SheNYC Arts’ programs is for our artists to gain experience in the theater industry without the normal barriers that exclude marginalized gender people, especially artists of color or artists with disabilities. Showcasing the work of emerging playwrights and composers, we hold a free, open, and blind submission process for full-length plays and musicals. We use a transparent script selection process, with every show submitted being read by a minimum of 3 and a maximum of 5 script readers, including producers, dramaturgs, literary managers, and more. Then via a communal dialogue with SheNYC Board, Executives, and Staff, top scripts are presented, and a season of 18 shows are selected. Only then are the names of the playwrights and composers shared with the group.

Online Asynchronous

A Look at the Art and Social Justice Practices of Performing Statistics' No Kids in Prison Project

Umika Pathak
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session

Social practice art, or art geared towards amplifying social justice issues, is on the rise. This review examines how the organization, Performing Statistics, engages social practice art by activating artistic practices, leadership and engagement from impacted communities, and intentional curation of art and statistics for the purpose of broadening public understanding of youth incarceration. The focus is on Performing Statistics Philadelphia No Kids in Prison exhibition at Cherry Street Pier, though the review also addresses the traveling nature of the exhibition. I privilege the production process of the artwork as well as the exhibition experience that the art creates with the intention of expanding the reception that informational exhibits such as these tend to receive by engaging a close-looking analysis of the art.

Room 313 (College of Education - Building 505) : 2024-05-26 11:10

Visualizing the Cosmos in Early China

Zi Quan
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session

In my research I investigate the "Shi Image', a meta-image and a representation of the Cosmos found in various forms in Ancient China. The image embodies the basic logic of Chinese philosophy and offers the basis for an understanding of the links between art forms that demonstrate a shared cosmological world view.' I examine the archive of such images that originated in the Han Dynasty. I start with the hazy and fragmented understanding of the Cosmos to be found in the late Neolithic period in China up to the beginnings of the Han Dynasty, before the emergence of the Shi Image. I look at various forms of textual inscription, including hieroglyphs and marks on tortoise shells, known as ‘oracle bones’, as well as traces of cosmology in myths and legends, maps and star charts. I then look at the cosmological image. This is an under-researched topic and at the heart of my project. There are comparatively few examples of such images, and they are found in different forms of cultural artefact, studied by disparate disciplines. One of my aims is to demonstrate the commonalities in these disparate images and show how they manifest a particular visual logic, manifested in various forms, including planar images and stereo images, and how, in turn, these offer representations of concepts of space and time and cosmological understanding.

Seminar 1 (Paiknam Library- Building 501) 6th Floor : 2024-05-25 10:40

Scripting the Unscripted

Lulu Ao
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session

This paper centres on the Mosuo culture, a unique matrilineal society in southwestern China, which has no written language. While much of the academic and popular focus has been on its matriarchal aspects, such as its distinctive matrimonial practices, this study underscores the often-overlooked significance of the Mosuo's rich oral tradition. The central challenge tackled in this research is representing the Mosuo—a culture where linguistic nuances remain primarily unexplored—through text art, a medium predominantly linked to written expressions. Venturing into this less-charted terrain, the research introduces novel academic pathways in text art. Simultaneously, it offers a balanced critique of dominant Western perspectives, challenging their sometimes superficial portrayals of the Mosuo culture. Grounded in participant observation, in-depth interviews, and studio practices, the study delves deeply into the Mosuo's linguistic dynamics, juxtaposed with its more widely recognized cultural attributes. Central to the discussion is the author's text artwork, Mosuo Language (2022). This piece innovatively translates the Mosuo's intricate oral patterns into captivating visual representations using the International Phonetic Alphabet. This approach instigates renewed discussions in contemporary text art and highlights its potential to encapsulate cultures with understudied linguistic facets. In conclusion, this exploration provides valuable insights into portraying lesser-studied linguistic aspects of cultures in text art, emphasizing the versatility of the medium and paving the way for future interdisciplinary endeavours.

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The Perspectives and Challenges of Teaching Creative Writing

Jekaterina Karelina
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session

This research examines the deeper purposes behind the teaching of creative writing. In the last thirty years, there has been an explosion of creative writing teaching for all ages across the world, particularly in further and higher education institutions and yet very little research has directly addressed why the subject is taught. During and after the pandemic this industry increased hugely. I explore how has the creative writing industry changed during COVID-19 lockdowns and why people still want to write and express themselves through writing practices? Why is it so important to publish a book as a core of self-identification and self-positioning nowadays? And how to teach creative writing in the era of chatGPT?

Online Asynchronous

Performing Selves

Katherine Mae Sabate
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session

Learning, experiencing, and making theatre not only nurture artists but equip human beings to journey within themselves and understand the world they belong in. Guang Ming College, unique from other Performing Arts colleges in the Philippines, teaches Performing Arts in an environment informed by Humanistic Buddhism. Part of its curriculum is a course on Humanistic Buddhism in Performing Arts, which tackles how performing arts shall be experienced and expressed in the virtue of humanism – with its creation, collaboration and management. Guided by literature in applied theatre, drama and theatre in education, and Goffman’s “The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life,” - this paper investigates the importance of drama and theatre in education in performing every day in a highly contextualized space. Guided by the virtues and theories of/on Humanistic Buddhism, this paper juxtaposes the significance of how lived experiences become meaningful with mindfulness. This case study is a dramaturgical analysis of Guang Ming College’s performing arts students on how they lived and performed their everyday lives at the College. This paper, using theatre as a metaphor for daily life, looks into the nuances of how learning, experiencing and making theatre equipped these students to become dramaturgs of their own lives. Through the lives of these students, this paper concludes, reaffirms, and exhibits that/how theatre is a sanctuary for transformation where one can (re)discover the self, others, the self in the other, society, and the world to be mindful on one’s role in day-to-day adventures and challenges.

Seminar 2 (Paiknam Library - Building 501) 6th Floor : 2024-05-25 14:00

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