The first speakers for IGES' and TFTS' 'Performing Ecology and Environment Lecture Series', this year are John Fox and Professor Baz Kershaw.
John Fox is the co-founder of one of the UK's most important performance companies, the legendary Welfare State International; and Baz Kershaw is the author of numerous books, including Theatre and Ecology: Environments and Performance Events (2007).
Their two-part talk will take place on Thursday October 11, Rehearsal Room 1, Parry-Williams Building, the Department of Theatre, Film and Television, Aberystwyth University. The first is scheduled for 11am-1pm; the second for 6-7.30 pm.
Others speakers scheduled for this academic year include: John McGrath, David Williams and Sue Palmer, Wallace Heim, Harriet Hawkins, Haydn Lorimer, J-D Dewsbury, and Claire Hind and Gary Winters.
Building on existing collaborations between the disciplines of geography and performance studies in Aberystwyth and elsewhere, the aim of this series is to explore how theatre and performance might offer new possibilities for ecological and environmental thinking.
Carl
The Poetry Under Our Feet.
John Fox and Baz Kershaw have known each other for well over four decades. As working colleagues and friends their creative souls have intertwined on many journeys bouncing between theatrical expression and ecological concern. For both of them performance has been a catalyst driving their separate paths. In this duet of linked talks each practitioner demonstrates and illustrates why they have arrived at their current not dissimilar positions.
Part One by John Fox 11am -1pm. Illustrated with many images and films.
Welfare State International to Dead Good Guides.
In 1968 a troupe of nomadic dreamers cushioned with a circus tent and caravans set out to create “an entertainment, an alternative and a way of life.” They succeeded in drawing art away from elitist ghettos and, with participating communities, invented many prototypes of celebratory vernacular theatre. Forms such as site -specific fire shows, lantern parades, carnivals and street bands invaded mainstream culture.WSI fired the Houses of Parliament, raised the Titanic and moved the Sheds of Trident. Sometimes this work was hijacked by commodity spectacle. So, to make art that was truly necessary and a way of life, they researched new ceremonies for rites of passage. They constructed wooden buildings, celebrated the mysteries of `Morecambe Bay and, in working with scientists to extol the wonders of micro marine critters, they conjured up The Weather Station.
Part Two. By Baz Kershaw. 6-7.30pm. Illustrated with a few pictures and one cautioning cartoon.
On Flattened Grass and Telling Science Frictions
Faced with the steady advance of bad news about climate change futures, that old environmentalist nostrum ‘Think global, act local’ is no longer fit for purpose. The Earth’s ecological processes are not divided up by such binaries, and neither is the cognition and embodiment of humans. But the majority ofHomo sapiens continue to behave as if they are, and the double binds of denial and inertia tighten as the biosphere heats up. This short presentation explores how earthbound human performances might alleviate or reverse those dangerous tendencies. It compares recent artistic and scientific experiments for how they might aid the undoing of some environmental double binds and – having briefly considered a couple of Weather Station and Earthrise Repair Shop practices – tentatively suggests the marginal news may not turn out to be quite so bad. |
