ARTS  UPDATE

15  September  2017  

News  

UC  Arts  at  the  Arts  Centre  

This  week  has  been  a  busy  week  of  performances!  On  Sunday  night  we  had  the  New  Zealand  premiere  performance  of  the  Oresteia  Experience  as  part  of  the  Christchurch  Arts  Festival  2017.  The  School  of  Music,  Classics  department  and  Teece  Museum  of  Classical  Antiquities  came  together  to  create  a  theatrical  evening  and  a  great  achievement  for  UC  College  of  Arts.  It  was  a  huge  success  with  a  full  house  and  rave  reviews;  a  credit  to  the  team  who  were  involved  in  bringing  this  vision  to  life.      Check  out  a  review  at  the  link  below:  https://www.theatreview.org.nz/reviews/review.php?id=10541    We  were  thrilled  to  have  the  opportunity  to  hear  Yoomia  Sim  and  Hugo  Zanker  performing  at  our  weekly  New  Music  Central  Concert  on  Monday  night.  An  exciting  and  varied  programme  of  contemporary  works,  using  backing  tracks  and  live  looping.  

Randall  Scotting  was  the  soloist  in  the  Oresteia  Experience  and  we  were  treated  to  a  concert  by  him  on  Tuesday  night.  This  recital  featured  a  varied  programme  from  early  works  through  to  folk  songs  and  more  modern  compositions.  He  also  presented  a  voice  masterclass  on  Wednesday  for  our  students  which  was  open  to  the  public.    Professor  Mark  Menzies  will  be  performing  2  concerts  this  weekend,  as  part  of  his  concert  series  ‘4  in  the  time  of  7’.  You  can  see  him  at  the  Nut  Point  Centre  at  7.30pm  on  Saturday  16,  with  door  sales  available.  He  will  also  be  performing  on  Sunday  17  at  5pm  as  part  of  UC’s  involvement  with  the  Christchurch  Arts  Festival  2017,  and  the  School  of  Music’s  Virtuosity  Series.  Tickets  for  this  can  be  bought  at  http://www.artsfestival.co.nz/virtuosity-­‐series  and  there  will  be  limited  door  sales.    *Please  note,  this  coming  Monday  (18  September)  there  is  no  New  Music  Central  concert.    

Oceanic  Memory:  Islands,  Ecologies,  Peoples  –  Postgraduate  Masterclass    The  Oceanic  Memory  Conference  organising  committee  is  pleased  to  announce  a  Postgraduate  Masterclass,  “Oceanic  Memory  Research”  to  take  place  on  29  November  2017  at  the  UC  Arts  Centre  campus  in  the  central  city.    The  Masterclass  will  consist  of  reading  and  discussion  of  essays  related  to  the  poetics,  politics  and  ethics  of  memory  and/in  the  Pacific,  selected  and  led  by  the  three  keynote  presenters  at  the  Oceanic  Memory  Conference:    

•   Professor  Ross  Gibson  (University  of  Canberra,  Australia)  •   Professor  Sudesh  Mishra  (University  of  the  South  Pacific,  Fiji)  •   Associate  Professor  Elizabeth  DeLoughrey  (University  of  California,  Los  Angeles)  

 This  Masterclass  will  provide  a  forum  for  exploring  shared  research  interests  in  questions  of  memory  and  the  Pacific  across  a  range  of  Humanities  and  Social  Sciences  fields.    It  will  give  participants  the  opportunity  for  sustained  engagement  with  the  work  of  influential  scholars  whose  research  contributes  to  the  burgeoning  field  of  memory  studies  from  a  variety  of  perspectives  and  methodologies,  such  as  the  environmental  humanities,  postcoloniality  and  modernity,  aesthetics  and  complexity  theory.    Students  will  receive  copies  of  the  essays  by  the  presenters  in  advance.    There  will  also  be  some  opportunity  for  participants  to  discuss  their  own  work  with  the  group  and  lead  presenters.      There  is  no  cost  for  the  Masterclass  itself;  however  there  is  a  $50  registration  fee  for  participants  in  the  Masterclass  who  wish  to  attend  the  Oceanic  Memory  Conference,  30  November  –  2  December,  2017.    9.00-­‐10.30am:       Session  1:  led  by  Elizabeth  Deloughrey  10.30-­‐11.00am:     Tea/Coffee  11.00-­‐12.30pm:       Session  2:  led  by  Ross  Gibson  12.30-­‐2.00pm:     Lunch  2.00-­‐3.30pm:       Session  3:  led  by  Sudesh  Mishra    3.30-­‐4.00pm:     Tea/Coffee  4.00-­‐5.00pm:       Discussion  of  student  work    Notes  for  participants:    To  preserve  the  level  and  quality  of  participant  involvement,  the  number  of  participants  is  limited  to  fifteen.    Registrations  should  include  a  short  CV  and  the  completed  registration  form  (2  pages).    Please  submit  your  registration  materials  as  soon  as  possible,  and  no  later  than  9th  October  2017.    Contact  Alan  Wright  for  further  information  about  registration:  alan.wright@canterbury.ac.nz     School  of  Fine  Arts    Highly  Acclaimed  Australian  artist  Jon  Campbell’s  exhibition  ‘Afternoon  Delight’  is  now  open  in  the  Ilam  Campus  Gallery,  Block  2,  Fine  Arts  and  runs  until  5  October,  all  welcome.    

   

(Image  from  opening  event,  Aaron  Beehre  and  Jon  Campbell  on  guitar)      Classics    On  Sunday  September  10th  The  Oresteia  Experience  -­‐  Iannis  Xenakis’  operatic  reworking  of  Aeschylus’  tragic  trilogy  of  458  BC  -­‐  was  performed  at  the  Arts  Centre  by  the  School  of  Music  with  contributions  from  the  UC  Classics  dept.  and  tours  of  the  Teece  Museum.    Prof  Mark  Menzies  (Music  Performance)  conducted  and  the  soloist  was  leading  US-­‐born  counter  tenor  Randall  Scotting.    The  power  and  intensity  of  the  piece  really  came  across  in  everything  from  the  superb  singing  to  the  musicianship  of  the  ensemble  and  its  maestro,  to  the  haunting  choreography  (by  Julia  Harvey)  and  imaginative  staging  (by  Stuart  Lloyd-­‐Harris).  This  NZ  premiere  was  an  extraordinarily  ambitious  undertaking  and  proved  a  great  success  thanks  to  a  broad  collaborative  effort,  including  those  who  worked  behind  the  scenes  to  make  it  all  run  smoothly.    The  performance  was  preceded  by  talks  from  Dr  Patrick  O’Sullivan  (Head  of  Classics)  who  spoke  on  Aeschylus'  original  Oresteia  and  its  reception  over  time,  and  by  Mark  Menzies  who  spoke  on  Xenakis’  take  on  the  Aeschylean  model.    Both  speakers  also  contributed  written  pieces  to  the  programme,  and  audiences  took  tours    of  the  Teece  Museum  where  they  heard    Classics  tutor  Natalie  Looyer  talk  on  artefacts  relevant  to  the  story.  The  success  of  this  overall  project  indicates  that  the  shared  presence  of  Classics  and  Music  in  town  forms  an  ideal  basis  for  future  collaborations  between  two  fields  which  have  had  such  a  long  tradition  of  mutual  influence  and  inspiration.  Here  is  one  review:  https://www.theatreview.org.nz/reviews/review.php?id=10541    On  Thursday  Sept.  7th,  in  the  lead  up  to  The  Oresteia  Experience,  Patrick,  Mark  and  Randall  appeared  on  Eva  Radich’s  Upbeat  programme  on  RNZ  Concert  to  discuss  the  performance,  what  audiences  could  expect  and  why  a  2,500  year-­‐old  story  set  in  ancient  Greece  can  still  speak  so  powerfully  today  in  the  21st  century.    It  can  be  heard  here:  http://www.radionz.co.nz/concert/programmes/upbeat/audio/201857631/the-­‐greek-­‐tragedy-­‐told-­‐in-­‐song  

   

     

Canterbury  School  for  Continental  Philosophy  

Canterbury School for Continental Philosophy Seminar Series

Dr Rodrigo Gonsalves (Brazil, CSII) ‘Monstrosity and the Uncanny’

September  22nd,  11-­‐12  -­‐  Puaka  James  Hight,  Room  210,  Friday  11-­‐12.  Everyone  is  welcome.    The  fantastic  narrative  finds  through  horror  a  type  of  symbolic  promise  that  its  limits  can  reach  different  representations  to  the  subject’s  life  experience.  Almost  as  if  we  could  find  through  horror,  something  more  real  than  reality  itself,  allowing  the  extrapolations  of  the  fantastic  to  take  place  on  such  narratives.  And  this  is  not  necessarily  a  new  stand-­‐point,  since  we  can  already  find  such  elements  on  Poe,  Hawthorne,  Lovecraft,  Hoffmann,  as  well  as  in  many  other  modern  writers.  But  more  interesting  than  that,  is  that  this  common  element  of  the  fantastic  inviting  the  limits  of  the  human  conduct  to  reflect  upon  each  other,  seems  actually  much  older  than  that.  The  transmutation  of  ancient  civilization  myths  has  gained  through  the  historical  development  of  the  contemporary  culture  a  new  disguise,  a  new  form  and  because  of  that,  these  elements  live  nowadays  within  the  fantastic.  Those  ancient  elements  became  symbols,  sometimes  fully  absorbed  and  sometimes  not,  by  the  current  culture,  and  those  very  own  elements  tend  to  (re)-­‐appear  when  the  current  symbolical  representations  fail  to  grasp  aspects  of  the  human  experience  under  a  certain  contingency.  And  basically,  this  is  the  reason  that  sometimes  the  horror  and  the  narrative  

of  terror,  seems  crucial  to  be  assimilated  into  the  theoretical  grounds  of  the  human  sciences.  The  ingredients  derived  from  this  particular  genre  can  better  formalise  and  assimilate  some  of  the  treacherous  aspects  of  the  human  narrative  of  suffering,  which  we  would  like  to  consider  in  this  seminar.  With  this  line  of  thinking  in  mind,  the  other  arguments  sustained  by  this  seminar  hopefully,  will  elaborate  on  both  the  philosophical  and  psychoanalytic  basis,  aiming  at  how  those  fields  can  be  benefited  for  taking  such  critical  elements  under  their  scope.    

Human  Services  and  Social  Work    Last  week  at  the  Australia  New  Zealand  Social  Work  and  Welfare  Education  and  Research  (ANZSWWER)  conference  at  Auckland  University  Assoc.  Professor  Jane  Maidment  (Social  Work)  and  Assoc.  Professor  Ronnie  Egan  (RMIT  University,  Melbourne)  were  presented  with  the  award  for  Trans-­‐Tasman  Collaboration.  The  award  was  in  recognition  of  their  sustained  collaboration  in  education  and  scholarship  associated  with  social  work  practice  skill  development.  Their  edited  volume  Practice  Skills  for  Social  Work  and  Welfare  (2016)  now  in  its  third  edition  has  a  particular  focus  on  getting  students  engaged  with  authentic  practice  scenarios  in  preparation  for  practicum  education.      

   

Political  Science  and  International  Relations    Prof  Alex  Tan  participated  at  the  2017  Annual  Meeting  of  the  American  Political  Science  Association  in  San  Francisco,  USA  and  presented  a  paper  titled  "Issue  Structure  of  Voter  Choice  in  Taiwan's  2016  Presidential  Election"  which  he  co-­‐authored  with  Prof  Cal  Clark  (Auburn  University)  and  Dr  Karl  Ho  (University  of  Texas  at  Dallas).    He  was  also  

discussant  in  an  international  research  panel  on  "Comparative  Party  Organisations:  Broadening  the  View"  where  he  commented  and  reviewed  papers  presented  by  scholars  from  Yale  University,  University  of  Houston,  Federal  University  of  Sao  Carlos  (Brazil),  University  of  Strathclyde  (UK)  and  Okayama  University  (Japan).    Three  PhD  scholars  from  the  College  of  Arts  working  on  sustainability  and  politics  issues  head  to  London  this  week  to  take  part  in  a  research  workshop  on  Sustainable  Prosperity.  They  are  from  left:  Dr,  Sylvia  Nissen,  Mehedi  Hasan  and  Geoff  Ford  members  of  the  Sustainable  Civitizenship  and  Civic  imagination  research  lab  led  by    Assc  Professor  Bronwyn  Hayward  (right).  With  Bronwyn  Hayward  they  will  attend  a  UK  Economic  and  Social  Research  Council  post-­‐graduate  research  workshop  to  discuss  cutting  edge  approaches  to  living  more  sustainably  while  achieving  community  wellbeing.    

 

Sylvia  Nissen’s  PhD  was  jointly  supervised  between  politics  and  sociology  with  Hayward  and  Assc  Prof  Ruth  McManus  and  examined  levels  of  student  debt  and  the  implications  for  student  political  engagement,  wellbeing  and  achievement      Geoff  Ford  is  a  PhD  scholar  in  linguistics  and  politics  with  Dr  Kevin  Watson  and  Assc  Prof  Hayward  –Geoff  has  used  his  background  in  IT  to  digitise  the  Hansard  debates  and  talk  back  radio  to  understand  how  people  talk  about  the  economy  and  the  sustainability  and  other  political  implications  of  everyday  language      Mehedi  Hasan  is  studying  politics  and  geography  with  Drs  Dombromski  (Geog),  Hatcher  (Political  Science  and  IR)  and  Hayward  to  understand  how  young  people’s  experience  of  wellbeing  and  physical  security  can  be  enhanced  by  access  to  green  space  in  a  rapidly  urbanising  context  of  Dhaka  City  Bangladesh    All  three  students  will  participate  in  the  Centre  for  Understanding  Sustainable  Prosperity  Doctoral  workshop  on  new  research  techniques  and  ideas,  at  the  University  of  Surrey  and  take  part  in  the  launch  of  a  new  international  study  Hayward  leads  with  CUSP,  and  seven  international  research  teams  in  cities  around  the  world  examining  how  cities,  

businesses  and  communities  can  make  sustainable  differences  to  the  quality  of  young  people’s  lives  and  wellbeing.    Professor  Anne-­‐Marie  Brady,  Department  of  Political  Science  and  International  Relations,  was  the  keynote  speaker  at  the  Antarctic  Frontier  conference,  September  13,  2017,  hosted  by  the  Australian  Academy  of  Science,  in  Hobart,  Australia,  speaking  on  “Antarctic  politics  in  an  era  of  geopolitical  change”.        

Sociology  and  Anthropology      Mike  Grimshaw  has  a  chapter  “Hermeneutic  Capitalism?  Prologue-­‐  the  Death  and  the  Challenge”  in  Making  Communism  Hermeneutical.  Reading  Vattimo  &  Zabala  ed.  Mazzini  &  Glynn-­‐Williams  (Springer  2017).  The  book  is  a  series  of  invited  responses  to  Vattimo  &  Zabala’s  groundbreaking  foundational  Text  Hermeneutic  Communism  2011.  It  also  includes  responses  by  Vattimo  &  Zabala  to  each  chapter  and  in  response  to  Grimshaw’s  chapter  they  declare  they  “consider  this  to  be  one  of  the  most  significant  contributions  of  our  book,  because  it  invites  other  political  theories  to  prevent  falling  back  into  metaphysics."      National  Centre  for  Research  on  Europe    On  August  24-­‐27,  the  NCRE’s  Natalia  Chaban,  Martin  Holland,  Iana  Sabatovych  and  Rebecca  Morgan  participated  in  the  “Crisis,  Conflict  and  Critical  Diplomacy:  EU  Perceptions  in  Ukraine  and  Israel/Palestine”  (C3EU)  in  Kyiv,  Ukraine.  This  fifth  workshop  meeting  involved  partners  from  11  universities  around  the  world  and  featured  results  of  the  third  stage  of  this  Jean  Monnet  Network  -­‐-­‐  analysis  of  EU  perceptions  among  youth  -­‐  as  well  as  a  new  findings  in  media  and  elite  opinion  analysis.    On  the  photo  is  the  C3EU  team  with  HE  Luc  Jacobs,  Ambassador  of  Belgium  to  Ukraine  –  His  Excellency  gave  a  key  note  during  the  C3EU  workshop.        NCRE-­‐led  research  project  “EU  Global  Perceptions”  presented  its  latest  findings  at  the  leading  conferences  in  EU  studies.    Natalia  Chaban  gave  a  plenary  talk  at  the  UACES  conference  in  Krakow  (Poland)  on  external  views  on  the  EU’s  global  role,  as  well  as  two  papers  on  EU  perceptions  in  Ukraine,  Israel  and  Palestine.    At  ECPR  (European  Political  Consortium  Research)  conference  in  Oslo  (Norway)  and  EISA  (European  International  Studies  Association)  conference  in  Barcelona  (Spain),  Natalia  presented  three  papers  elaborating  findings  of  the  on-­‐going  project  “EU  Global  Perceptions”.  The  papers  were  co-­‐authored  with  Ole  Elgström  (Lund  University),  Michel  Knodt  (TU  Darmstadt),  and  NCRE  researchers  Iana  Sabatovych  and  Olga  Gulyaeva.      

     

     

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