On Sept. 5, 2019 at 14.00-18.00, Think Lounge, in Tiedekulma (second floor). Open to all.
Special presentations from Dr James Nisbet, Associate Professor at University of California, Irvine, USA and Dr Catherine Laws, Reader in Music at the University of York, UK. This event is co-organized with the 3D3 Doctoral programme of Falmouth University, Plymouth University and University of Western England, who are in Helsinki for the week. The event complements the Doctoral Programme in History and Cultural Heritage annual Summer School, but is open to all.
James Nisbet is an art historian whose research addresses contemporary art, theory, and criticism, with a particular focus on cultural issues on ecology and environmental history. He received his PhD in Art History from Stanford University in 2011, and is currently Associate Professor at the University of California, Irvine in the Department of Art History and PhD Program in Visual Studies. His first book, Ecologies, Environments, and Energy Systems in Art of the 1960s and 1970s, was published by MIT Press in 2014. Recent essays have taken up more contemporary environmental politics, as well as tracing the deeper roots of scientific theories of energy within the history of photography. His writing has appeared in publications including American Art, Artforum, Art Bulletin, Art Journal, Grey Room, Modernism/modernity, Photography and Culture, and X-TRA, in addition to many edited volumes and catalogues. Nisbet’s research has been supported by fellowships from the Getty Research Institute, Harry Ransom Center, Georgia O’Keeffe Research Center, and Dumbarton Oaks. His talk examines the wide-ranging concept of energy and its intersection with contemporary visual art.
Catherine Laws is Reader in Music at the University of York, UK, and a Senior Artistic Research Fellow at the Orpheus Institute, Ghent. As a pianist Catherine specializes in contemporary music, working collaboratively with composers and often drawing other artists, especially theatre and film makers, into her projects. Her artistic research is focused variously on processes of embodiment, subjectivity and collaboration in contemporary performance practices. She currently leads the research cluster ‘Performance, Subjectivity and Experimentation’ at the Orpheus Institute, exploring how subjectivity is produced through performance practices associated with new music: the co-authored book Voices Bodies Practices: Performing Musical Subjectivities (Leuven University Press, 2019) is one of the outcomes of this research and includes extended discussion of her recent multimedia performance piece, ‘Player Piano’. Catherine’s research in the field of word-and-music studies examines the relationship between music, language and meaning, focusing especially on Samuel Beckett and composers’ responses to his work. Her book, Headaches Among the Overtones: Music in Beckett/ Beckett in Music, came out in 2013.