Creative Futures, Creating Futures Seminar
Thursday 17 Nov 2022
4pm - 5.30pm
Hardiman Research Building
University of Galway
Drawing together academics and artists, this seminar explores how creative practitioners and thinkers can work together to prepare for future challenges, imagine future possibilities, and reflect on future forms of art-making, thinking, and living. The session draws together a group from the University of Galway and Queen’s University Belfast, who will engage in discussion and performances related to these topics – including a special improvised performance from the -ence collaborative project.
-ence is a collaborative project between free improviser Paul Stapleton and electronic musician and 1/3 of Belfast electro-pop band Not Squares, Ricki O’Rawe. Their debut album Dissensual Grooves was released on Resist in 2021. Their music sits between the uncertainty and openness of improvisation and the stability of the familiar palate of sounds and structures associated with dance music. A dis-sensual groove is one that appeals to a dancefloor’s desire for rhythm and movement while simultaneously disrupting its expectations, defamiliarising our engagement and slowing down our perceptions. Both Stapleton and O’Rawe are also academics and cultural theorists interested in exploring futurity and radical social change. With this multimodal project, which spans experimental instrument design, live improvisation, critical writing, and recorded music releases, they are going to “make the club strange”.
Speakers:
Dr Orla Lehane is a postdoctoral researcher in Creative Futures in the Moore Institute at the University of Galway. She is interested in the role that arts and arts engagement, in particular storytelling, can play in understandings of security and human rights, and in the reimagining of the political space. Orla’s research has focused on the use of creative interventions by youth violence prevention practitioners and depictions of violence in animated documentaries. She has extensive experience working in the area of arts and human rights education.
Dr Ricki O’Rawe is a researcher and musician based in Belfast. His research explores the intersections of art with politics and religion in Latin American visual and literary cultures. As a musician he has released two albums (Yeah OK, 2011; Bolts, 2015) with the Belfast/London-based group Not Squares. As an artist he has exhibited in the Naughton Gallery and Platform Arts, most recently in collaboration with Liam Crichton (Echo Chamber, Multiple Locations, 2016).
Dr Maria Roca Lizarazu is postdoctoral researcher in Creative Futures at the Moore Institute/NUI Galway. Her interests include literature and culture in the contemporary German-language context, with a specific focus on Jewish and other minority cultures, cultural memory, (post-)migration, and citizenship. Maria is particularly interested in how arts-based research as well as creative methods can influence and transform social, cultural and political responses to migration, diversity, and citizenship.
Professor Paul Stapleton is an improviser and sound artist originally from Southern California. He performs with a variety of modular metallic sound sculptures, custom made electronics and found objects. Paul is currently based at SARC in Belfast, where he teaches and conducts research in new musical instrument design, music performance, sound design, and critical improvisation studies. He has received critical acclaim for several artistic projects, including his album FAUNA (2013, pfMENTUM) with saxophonist Simon Rose, and for his sound design and composition work as part of the immersive audio theatre piece Reassembled, Slightly Askew (2015).
Venue: Room G011, Moore Institute Seminar Room, Hardiman Research Building, University of Galway
Accessibility: venue is wheelchair accessible
Parking: pay and display
TULCA Festival of Visual Arts
The World Was All Before Them
Curated by Clare Gormley
4 - 20 November 2022
Galway, Ireland