Further information
The ethos of SymbioticA is that ideas are discussed and shared openly.
The Friday Seminar Series is designed to allow an open forum to disseminate artistic, scientific, ethical and philosophical research and practice of resident researchers, visiting artists and scholars to our University.
SymbioticA holds regular Friday Seminars at 3.00pm in SymbioticA Room 228, Level 2, School of Anatomy and Human Biology, UWA. Everyone is welcome.
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Upcoming seminars
Amanda Newall and Ola Johansson: PROJEKTET
Date: 18 May 2012
Time: 3:00pm
Location: SymbioticA
Speakers: Amanda Newall and Ola Johansson
The immune system can be seen as the metaphorical factor of applied performance, which makes the latter artistic practice more than simply social work. Transposed into a functional nomenclature, the immune system makes a larger body stay healthy by encountering visitors (pathogens) by way of recollection, accommodation, identification, discrimination, protection, and aggression. But it may also learn to live with strangers, ad interim, even if it doesn’t quite know who they are. This captures the current challenges of contemporary applied performance very well.
Applied performance is used when social crises require extraordinary management beyond simple solutions. Such conflicts often subsist on deep structural and implicit behavioural attitudes between two parties in situations of, i.e., racism, bullying, gender discord, postcolonial disputes, ecological predicaments, and so forth. Applied performance is often initiated by a third party, e.g., extension workers in non-governmental organizations, who approach conflicts with an equally cooperative and critical mind towards the host culture, but also those who choose to participate in projects.
Amanda Newall is Senior Lecturer in sculpture at Royal Institute of Arts (Kungliga Konsthögskolan) in Stockholm, Sweden. She is also conducting a doctoral project at Chelsea College of Art, University of the Arts, London. She has taught sculpture, socially engaged art, curatorship, professional practice and new media at Auckland University, Lancaster Institute for Contemporary Arts (UK), and has exhibited numerous international shows.
Ola Johansson is Guest Professor in artistic research at Stockholm Academy of Dramatic Arts (Stockholms dramatiska högskola). His books on community theatre and performance art are paralleled by creative work in intercultural performance, documentary film, devising, and applied performance. He has taught devising and applied performance in the UK, Sweden and India. Johansson’s have published two books, Community Theatre and AIDS (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) and Performance and Philosophy: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Performing Arts (Saarbrücken: VDM Verlag, 2008).
Semipermeable Seminar Series
SymbioticA and the Institute of Advanced Studies at UWA are please to present the Semipermeable public lecture series.
Just like a Semipermeable membrane, SymbioticA- The Centre of Excellence in Biological Arts, offers exchange between art and the life sciences. Based at the school of Anatomy, Physiology & Human Biology, The University of Western Australia (UWA), SymbioticA is developing a new research project entitled Semipermeable, which will be facilitated through a multiplicity of artistic and scientific approaches. This “quarantine” will allow for controlled hybridisation and will act as a membrane for cultural production.
http://www.ias.uwa.edu.au/lectures
Of Mice and Men
Date: 23rd May 2012
Time: 6:00pm
Location: Webb Lecture Theatre (G21), Ground Floor, Geography Building, UWA
Speaker: Orkan Telhan
The Nature of Design is changing. It is becoming an interdisciplinary enterprise beyond form and function; a field of synthetic opportunism to serve up the last bit of molecules for grooming human needs and desires.
The Design of Nature is also changing. Apart from the sentimentalism towards pastoral days, nature, after its “synthetic turn,” is returning back as a molecular battlefield, where each species is trying to take back control from each other.
In this talk, I reflect on the changes that are fundamentally transforming our perception of design and nature today. I discuss a series of work in relation to recent advances in biological sciences and engineering. From living to semi-living, to the non-living, and, synthetically death, I will present new frontiers of design where new ways of composing, assembling, regulating, programming and tinkering life can be seen beyond cheap medicine, better-yielding crops, sustainable building materials or renewable energy, and offer a different logic of life.
Orkan Telhan is an interdisciplinary artist, designer and researcher whose investigations focus on the design of interrogative objects, interfaces, and media, engaging with critical issues in social, cultural, and environmental responsibility. Telhan is Assistant Professor of Fine Arts - Emerging Design Practices at University of Pennsylvania, School of Design. Telhan is working towards his PhD in Design and Computation at MIT School of Architecture and Planning. He was part of the Sociable Media Group at the MIT Media Laboratory. He studied Media Arts at the State University of New York at Buffalo and theories of media and representation, visual studies and graphic design at Bilkent University, Ankara. Telhan's individual and collaborative work has been exhibited in a number of venues including Ars Electronica, ISEA, LABoral, Archilab, Architectural Association, Architectural League/ NYC, and the MIT Museum.
The Opposition to Portraiture in Islamic Art
Date: 29 June 2012
Time: 3:00pm
Location: Lawrence Wilson Gallery, University of Western Australia
Speaker: Dr Stefano Carboni, Director Art Gallery of Western Australia
It is commonplace to purport that Islamic art is non-representational because of a religious ban on figurative expressions. Although this statement is far from being comprehensive or entirely true, the opposition to the figurative arts is a constant feature in the landscape of Islamic art throughout the centuries and this is one of the reasons why portraiture never fully develop as a specific genre. However, a few notable exceptions exist and they will be explored during the talk together with an introduction on the reputed religious ban and to which extent the figurative arts blossomed in a secular environment.
Stefano Carboni was appointed the 11th Director of the Art Gallery of Western Australia starting in October 2008. Previously he was Curator and Administrator in the Department of Islamic Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Visiting Professor at the Bard Graduate Center in New York. He joined the curatorial staff at the Metropolitan Museum in 1992 after completing his graduate studies in Arabic and in Islamic Art at the University of Venice and his Ph.D. in Islamic Art at the University of London. At the Metropolitan Museum he has been responsible for a large number of exhibitions, including the acclaimed Venice and the Islamic World, 828-1797 (2006-2007).
His publications include authoring and editing several exhibition catalogues, among which are Glass of the Sultans (2001); the prestigious Barr Award winner The Legacy of Genghis Khan. Courtly Arts and Culture in Western Asia, 1256-1353 (2002); and Venice and the Islamic World; another major publication is the catalogue of the Islamic glass collection in the National Museum of Kuwait (Glass from Islamic Lands. The Al-Sabah Collection, Kuwait National Museum, 2001).
He lectured widely in the museum and outside and taught courses in Islamic Art and Curatorial Studies on a regular basis at the Institute of Fine Arts (NYU), Hunter College (CUNY), and the Bard Graduate Center for the Decorative Arts in New York.
University information
CRICOS Code: 00126G
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