Cognition, Kinesthetics & Performance

 

The Research Centre for Cognition, Kinesthetics and Performance (CKP) at the University of Kent was launched in September 2010.

The desire to see a centre for studies in the field emerged in response to a number of synergies developing amongst scholars in the School of Arts and the desire to have a forum for generating interdisciplinary research through collaborative work. It now involves academics and practitioners from a range of disciplines including Drama, Psychology, Architecture, Anthropology, and Engineering & Digital Arts.

CKP recognises that cognition is a relatively new but rapidly developing field of research with significant implications for scholarship in the Arts and Humanities. In the words of Professor Bruce McConachie, who is a member of the CKP Advisory Committee:

Cognitive neuroscientists, psychologists, philosophers, evolutionary theorists, and linguists disagree about many aspects of consciousness, emotions, spatial perception, speech and all the other processes and attributes that facilitate and enhance performance spectatorship.. In general, scientists no longer model the operations of the mind/brain on the digital computer, the primary paradigm for cognitive science in the 1960's and 1970's. ..several schools of thought now compete in all areas of cognitive scholarship among the thousands of researchers in the field. (McConachie: 2008).

CKP is the first research center in the UK to be devoted to this expanding and exciting field in the area of performance studies. It builds on the work from a number of interdisciplinary conferences which have involved artists, neuroscientists, health practitioners, scientists and literary theorists. In doing so CKP aims to play an active role in the development of a national and international network of scholars and practitioners who believe that performance has a significant contribution to make within the field of cognition.

 

Autumn Term news update

• Launch of Imagining Autism on Wednesday December 14th, 5-7 in the Aphra Studio (Grimond Complex). All CKP members are invited. We are hoping this event will be well attended by a range of professionals from education, health and theatre contexts. The launch will include an exhibition of materials from the immersive installations to be used in the project and presentations by members of the project board and the research team as well as wine and nibbles in the Grimond Foyer. Please join us!
  

• CKP collaborates with the Dessau Bauhaus.

  The 'Walking in Motion' project, involved a workshop and performance organized by Dr Melissa Trimingham in conjunction with colleagues in Architecture and Torsten Blume Director of the Stage Workshop. Melissa also visited the Bauhaus with Pablo Pakula and several of our Masters students from the Contemporary Performance Practice specialism. They took part in workshops led by Torsten Blume in the iconic Dessau Bauahus Building, and performed there and in the town of Dessau.

New research collaborations

• Several CKP members have been involved in the development of research projects and are currently seeking funding. In October, Ania Bobrowicz (with her colleague Jim Ang) led discussions between Angela Gill (Assistant Curator for the Powell Cotton Museum), Rosemary Klich, Nicola Shaughnessy Pablo Pakula (Accidental Collective) and Rachel Batchelor to explore how digital media and live art could be used to transform user engagement in the museum experience. Following a visit to the Museum in November, the research team have developed a proposal and are seeking funding for a project entitled 'Live Art and the Dead Zoo.' Rosie and Pablo have also been working with Ania on developing an AHRC project proposal.
  

• Melissa Trimingham has submitted an application to the Leverhulme Visiting Professor Scheme for Professor Bruce McConachie to come to Kent in 2013. Bruce will be a key note speaker for the Theatre and Performance Research Association annual conference in September 2012 which Kent are hosting and if our application is successful he will join us in January 2013, presenting a lecture series in conjunction with practical workshops responding to his work (and led by a range of scholar practitioners, to include Johannes Birringer and Lorna Marshall). This application was part of our three year plan for CKP so thanks to Melissa for putting it together.

  Conference news

  Amercian Society for Theatre Research, November 2011

CKP was well represented at the American Society for Theatre Research in November, attended by Frank Camilleri, Robert Shaughnessy and Nicola Shaughnessy. Rhonda Blair, a member of the CKP advisory board and president of the ASTR presented a key note speech in which she spoke of the influence and importance of cognitive science on her work as a theatre scholar and practitioner. There were a series of meetings and discussions with the working group for Cognitive Science, Theatre and Dance and several international scholars have indicated an interest in coming to Kent to participate in CKP.

 

Theatre and Performance Research Association, September 2011

Following their conference paper for the Theatre and Performance Research Association (working group on Applied and Social Theatre) on Applied Theatre in the Workplace, Helen Brooks and Nicola Shaughnessy have been invited to Central School of Speech and Drama as guest speakers for a symposium organised by the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in the Arts (March 2012).

Performance Studies International 18 University of Leeds, June 2012

We have just heard that our application to present as a panel at the Performance Studies International Conference (Psi 18) has been successful. The panel is entitled 'What Price Participation' and features three papers by five CKP members as well as a Shift .

New Arrivals!

Look out for Rosie Klich's new book 'Multimedia Performance', advertised in the latest Palgrave catalogue

CKP members have been busy in other respects. Congratulations to Helen Brooks and Alastair Disley on their new arrivals!