I recently completed a PhD in performance at the University of York, with the title: A Sensory Journey into the Middle Ground: Interweaving Multiple Identities through Voice. As part of this PhD I created five performances exploring the following research questions:
1.How might exploration of instability and fluidity of identity be manifested in artistic practice?
2.How might processes of interweaving languages and practices affect identity, language and voice?
3.What is the artistic and political potential of the Middle Ground or Spannungsfeld (lit. ‘field of tension’)?
Here are links to the five performances, and below you can read the abstract of PhD. For the full thesis, visit: http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/26778/
Swimming between Shores
After Yeats: Coming Soon
Thumbelina
Woman at Point Zero (Work-in-Progress Performance)
Moonlarking
ABSTRACT:
This PhD documents and analyses my vocal practice of ‘interweaving’ (Fischer-Lichte, 2014) different languages and practices to create new pieces of music. The backbone of the submission is constituted by five newly-created performances, each telling stories of real or fantastical characters, and each developed in collaboration with artists and musicians from diverse backgrounds. This commentary explains how these performances are part of a deep investigation into vocal plurality within the dynamic potency of the ‘Middle Ground’ (Trinh T. Minh-ha, 2011), a metaphorical space without polarity and divisions, where movement is possible in multiple directions. My discussion engages with issues of personal identity as they resonate within hegemonic structures of power on national, international and ultimately global levels. Three interconnected concepts are inherent in the processes of interweaving, as developed in my practice: Wandering (Travelling), Twilight (Immersing yourself in the Middle Ground) and Sensing (Reawakening the Senses). In combination, these shape my creative methodology for practice, as well as offering a framework to illuminate how I am thinking through my work. As experiences, and as lenses through which to examine what I have created, they are threaded through with an ethos of play and reflection. Where playfulness generates a mindset of fluidity, reflection articulates and grounds the transformative process. Through these processes my artistic voice has gained a new agency, which cannot but leave the spaces in which I work unaltered. Through my work I hope to transform that of others, and ultimately reach beyond our divisions to a place of new possibilities, even transcendence.
1.How might exploration of instability and fluidity of identity be manifested in artistic practice?
2.How might processes of interweaving languages and practices affect identity, language and voice?
3.What is the artistic and political potential of the Middle Ground or Spannungsfeld (lit. ‘field of tension’)?
Here are links to the five performances, and below you can read the abstract of PhD. For the full thesis, visit: http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/26778/
Swimming between Shores
After Yeats: Coming Soon
Thumbelina
Woman at Point Zero (Work-in-Progress Performance)
Moonlarking
ABSTRACT:
This PhD documents and analyses my vocal practice of ‘interweaving’ (Fischer-Lichte, 2014) different languages and practices to create new pieces of music. The backbone of the submission is constituted by five newly-created performances, each telling stories of real or fantastical characters, and each developed in collaboration with artists and musicians from diverse backgrounds. This commentary explains how these performances are part of a deep investigation into vocal plurality within the dynamic potency of the ‘Middle Ground’ (Trinh T. Minh-ha, 2011), a metaphorical space without polarity and divisions, where movement is possible in multiple directions. My discussion engages with issues of personal identity as they resonate within hegemonic structures of power on national, international and ultimately global levels. Three interconnected concepts are inherent in the processes of interweaving, as developed in my practice: Wandering (Travelling), Twilight (Immersing yourself in the Middle Ground) and Sensing (Reawakening the Senses). In combination, these shape my creative methodology for practice, as well as offering a framework to illuminate how I am thinking through my work. As experiences, and as lenses through which to examine what I have created, they are threaded through with an ethos of play and reflection. Where playfulness generates a mindset of fluidity, reflection articulates and grounds the transformative process. Through these processes my artistic voice has gained a new agency, which cannot but leave the spaces in which I work unaltered. Through my work I hope to transform that of others, and ultimately reach beyond our divisions to a place of new possibilities, even transcendence.
