Wiebke Leister - Presenter Biog

Fig. 1 - Installation view of Eigenzeit (1999)

Wiebke Leister is a German artist and writer based in London. She studied photography at the University of Essen and holds a PhD from the Royal College of Art, London. As well as teaching on the MA Photography programme at the London College of Communication and at the University of Applied Sciences in Bielefeld, she has exhibited and published her work internationally. Her research investigates the nature of photographic portraiture beyond the limits of individual likeness – currently focussing on representations of faciality, including the laughing, mocking or kissing mouth in relation to its facial canvas. She is an Associate Director of the Photography and the Archive Research Centre at the University of the Arts London, and she has also worked in different museum contexts, organizing conferences and exhibitions.

Read more about her research at: www.lcc.arts.ac.uk/Wiebke_Leister_research.htm

Jane Collins: Presenter Biog

Fig 1. The Duchess's flight as viewed from the windows of the Nightingale Theatre photograph by Matthew Andrews.

READER

BIOGRAPHY: Jane Collins is a Reader in Theatre at Wimbledon College of Art. She is a writer, Director and theatre maker who works all over the UK and internationally. She has a long association with the continent of Africa and for The Royal Court, with the National Theatre of Uganda, she co-directed Maama Nalukalala N_dezze Lye (Mother Courage and her Children) by Bertolt Brecht, with a Ugandan cast in Kampala. This production which was funded by the British Council was the first official translation of a play by Brecht into an African language and toured internationally funded by the World Bank. Her AHRC funded research into ‘performing identities’ resulted in a new work for the stage The Story of the African Choir which was developed in conjunction with the Market Theatre Laboratory in Johannesburg and performed at the Grahamstown International Festival in 2007.

Throughout 2008–09 her research was mainly concerned with co-editing Theatre and Performance Design: a reader in scenography, which was published by Routledge in January 2010. This book, with over 52 texts is the first of its kind in this field. In addition, in 2009, her performance research included re-staging the award winning Ten Thousand Several Doors for the Brighton International Festival.

In November 2009 Collins was commissioned by the V&A to research and produce a soundscape to accompany the forthcoming Space and Light: Edward Gordon Craig Exhibition which opens in London in September 2010 and tours to Europe in 2011. Edward Gordon Craig is credited with being the founder of modern stage design. She was one of a group of artists who participated in re:SEARCHING playing in the archive an exhibition at the ING Bank in the city of London in May 2010 in response to the Baring archive. Collins has been asked to contribute an essay on Ten Thousand Several Doors to the forth coming collection Performing Site-Specific Theatre edited by Anna Birch and Joanne Tompkins to be published in late 2011.

RESEARCH STATEMENT: My research continues to focus on performance which re-engages the ‘theatrical’ as a means of interrogating contemporary society. In 2007 I wrote an article for Studies in Theatre and Performance which examined the efficacy of performance as a means of investigating the construction of post colonial identities through the ‘staging’ of an African ‘past’. One aspect of this research was an analysis of the scenographic framing of these performances for western audiences. Among the many outcomes of this process was the identification of a dearth of material with which to interrogate critically the visual aspects of performance in particular and the scenographic in general. Concurrent with this, in my role as Contextual Studies Co-ordinator for Theatre at Wimbledon, I was also concerned that students of theatre design did not have a comprehensive body of accessible written texts to help them situate their own work and analyse the work of others. Theatre and Performance Design, a reader in scenography aims to fulfil this need and continues to be the main focus of my research as a practitioner and in my critical writing.

RECENT SELECTED OUTPUTS AND ACHIEVEMENTS
SELECTED PERFORMANCES
2007 ‘The Story of the African Choir,’ Grahamstown International Festival, South Africa.
2006-9 Devised and Directed Ten Thousand Several Doors the Brighton International Festival. Best Production of the Festival Joint Winner, 2006, restaged 2009
2005–06 Wrote and Directed The Voyages of Harriet Herring ING Bank.
2005–06 Wrote and directed workshop performance: The Story of the African Choir, The Market Theatre, Johannesburg, South Africa.
2005–06 ‘Bright Angel Point’ Selected Finalist The Croydon Warehouse International Playwriting Festival.
2005 Bright Angel Point shortlist finalist; The Croydon Warehouse International Playwriting Festival.
2003–04 Completed draft Bright Angel Point. Reading at the Royal Shakespeare Company, ‘The Other Place’, Lawrence Boswell (dir).
2003–04 Shakespeare’s Dream on Sea, performance development project including workshop production, Northbrook Theatre, W. Sussex.

SELECTED CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS
2010 International Federation of Theatre Research, Munich
2009 International Federation of Theatre Research, Lisbon.
2007 Rhodes University Summer School Guest Speaker.
2007 Royal National Theatre ‘Agendas’ Seminar with John Carni.
2007 National Maritime Museum / Tate Gallery Travel and Narrative (paper).
2006 Theatre and Performance Research Association TAPRA (paper).
2006 The International Federation of Theatre Research Helsinki (paper).

SELECTED AWARDS
2007 AHRC Practice-led and Applied Research grant
2005 AHRB Small Grant in the Creative and Performing Arts.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Theatre and Performance Design: a reader in scenography, co-editor Routledge 2010
2007 ‘“Umuntu, Ngumuntu, Ngabantu”: The Story
of the African Choir’ in Studies in Theatre and Performance, 27.2.

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2007 ‘Stages Calling’ Ruphin Coudyzer, Thirty Years of Stage Photography, The Market Theatre Johannesburg; Royal National Theatre (co-curated by Michael Pavelka)

Katie Pratt - Presenter Biog

Fig. 2 – Sascheckewan (2007). Oil on canvas, 200 x 250 cm, Courtesy of the artist and Kontainer.

Katie Pratt

Senior Lecturer BA Painting Katie Pratt studied Painting at Winchester School of Art (BAhons) and Royal College of Art (MA). She won the Jerwood Painting Prize in 2001 and was awarded an AHRC Fellowship at the University of Southampton.

The paintings meditate on the making-process itself and the thinking that sustains my studio practice. Paint is simultaneously celebrated and treated with irreverence as it is thrown and splashed about. Each painting - through painstaking detailing - illustrates the thought process that has retrieved a rationale from the chaotic beginnings of poured paint.

Recent and forthcoming group exhibitions include Landscape Confection at the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, touring to Contemporary Arts Museum Houston & Orange County Museum, Los Angeles; Cold Climates at the Living Arts Museum, Reykjavik, New British Painting: Part 1 at John Hansard Gallery, Southampton and Approaching Content at the Crafts Council Gallery, London which toured to the Harris Museum, Preston. Solo exhibitions include Kontainer Gallery, Los Angeles; Forum d'Art Contemporain, Sièrre, Switzerland and Houldsworth, London.

Elisa Alaluusua - Presenter Biog

Writing/drawing.Text/image.Drawing rules/games/methods. Sketchbooks as spaces for thinking, organizing, collecting, solving problems, testing out ideas, storing information and memories. Time-based art and mark making

Gary McQuiggin - Presenter Biog

Fig. 1 - Erno Goldfinger's Alexander Fleming House in Elephant & Castle

I'm interested in making documentaries and video essays with a degree of complexity and mystery. More allusive than informative and more poetic than narrative based. I take my inspiration from pre narrative cinema, British documentary film units, the experimental cinema of the 70s, 80s and 90s, Mass Observation, Surrealism, Psychogeography and the Situationist International. I'm not in academia at the moment (perhaps waiting for the dust to settle) and my own film-making is currently on hold. I will be presenting my film The Elephant Without a Tail which I made as part of my BA at LCC and which I have recently screened at the Kassel Dokfest and Optica festival in Germany and Spain. The film is a diary film about my experience living in Elephant & Castle during the summer and autumn of 2009 just as the big regeneration program began and is an attempt to tease out some of the issues surrounding urban regeneration during a time of economic crisis.

http://www.blackoutinertia.co.uk

Vincenzo Di Maria - Presenter Biog

Fig 1 -Water Design Challenge 2010 – co-designing solutions in response to water wastage.

Vincenzo Di Maria is a multidisciplinary designer based between London and Lisbon. His work focuses on social innovation and sustainable development, with a holistic approach to industrial design from products to services. He uses creative techniques and people-centred design approach with an added touch of playfulness.

Vincenzo has been working and is currently freelancing as design researcher for Design Against Crime Research Centre at Central Saint Martins Innovation, University of the Arts London, where he has developed a range of skills and experiences in the field of Socially Responsive Design and Social Innovation.

Vincenzo is co-founder and director of Common Ground, a start up socially responsive design & innovation agency. Common Ground works with companies, organisations and communities to co-create new products, services and strategies that generate positive social change.

www.designagainstcrime.com/methodology-resources/socially-responsive-design/

www.gotocommonground.com

www.vdmdesign.net

Twitter: @cmngrd

Tansy Spinks - Presenter Biog

Fig 1. Tansy Spinks performance with electric violin

Tansy Spinks studied Fine Art in Leeds and has an MA in Photography from the Royal College of Art in London. She has exhibited widely both at home and abroad and is a Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at Middlesex University, a Lecturer at Camberwell College of Art, UAL and an External Assessor at Hertfordshire and Manchester Metropolitan Universities. Images have been purchased for several collections including the National Media Museum, Bradford and the Museum of Fine Art in Houston, Texas. Her work has been used commercially by many major publishers for book and CD covers and editorially. She is also a performer currently undertaking doctoral research into site-specific sound using live recordings and an electric violin based at LCC, University Of the Arts London (CRiSAP). She lives and works in London.

http://tansyspinks.com/