Kai Syng Tan
King's College London, Social, Genetic, Developmental Psychiatry Research Centre, Artist in Residence
Instagram, LinkedIn: @kaisyngtan
E: [email protected]
W: www.kaisyngtan.com/artful
Dr Kai Syng Tan FRSA PFHEA is an artist, consultant, curator and academic who is concerned with the body and mind in motion in a world in motion and commotion. She is best known for gathering diverse and divergent bodies and bodies of knowledge to engineer spaces of ‘productive antagonisms’ (Latham & Tan 2016) across disciplinary, geopolitical and cultural boundaries, in what she calls an interdisciplinary ‘ill-disciplined’ approach (Tan & Asherson 2018). Marked by an 'eclectic style and cheeky attitude' (Sydney Morning Herald 2006), 'radical interdisciplinarity' (Alan Latham 2016) and ‘positive atmosphere’ (Guardian 2014), Kai’s performance-lectures, installation, film, critical and creative text have been featured at Biennale of Sydney, Documenta (European Artistic Research Network conference) and Tokyo Designers’ Week. Venues include Science Museum, Southbank Centre, MOMA (New York), Royal Geographical Society and Moscow’s Dom Muzyiki. Media engagement include BBC Radio3 and Fuji TV. Recognition includes National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement Images Award (Culture Change) and San Francisco International Film Festival Golden Gate Award. Collections include Museum of London and Fukuoka Art Museum. She has taught in more than 40 higher education institutions (BA-PhD) as lecturer, programme leader and examiner, including King’s College London, Royal College of Art, Australian National University, Tama Art University (Tokyo) and Dumaguete University (Philippines).
Kai is described as ‘absolutely instrumental’ (Gregg Whelan 2015) in opening up what could be called ‘Running Studies’, which explores running as an arts and humanities discourse. This draws on her PhD research which was conducted at Slade School of Fine Art. Her Arts Council England funded Unlimited commission, #MagicCarpet, explores mind wandering, difference and neuro-diversity and has been enjoyed by more than 9000 people and said to ‘create a family for people with ADHD’ (review, The Psychologist). Co-created with disabled colleagues, the £4m Opening and Closing Ceremonies of 8th ASEAN Para Games (with Kai as Visual and Communications Director) was applauded as ‘spectacular’ by Singapore Prime Minister and game-changing and ‘most inclusive’ by the Singapore Association of the Deaf. With Jen Southern and others, she helped to curate the inaugural Arts and Mobilities Network Symposium in Summer 2018 at the Peter Scott Gallery.
Kai is Senior Lecturer at Manchester School of Art, leading a new MA in Executive Arts Leadership. She is also UK Research and Innovation and Arts and Humanities Research Council Peer Review College Member, Neurodiversity In/& Creative Research founder and co-chair (300 members), Hear Me Out trustee, Fermynwoods Contemporary Art trustee, British Journal of Psychiatry Editorial Board member (and first artist), Founder and Lead of RUN! RUN! RUN!, Co-Founder and Manager of the 90-member Running Cultures Research Group, Creative and Cultural Consultant of UK Adult ADHD Network (network for mental health professionals), Advisor to PsychART (linking psychiatry, creativity and the arts, funded by Royal College of Psychiatry), and Visual and Communications Consultant for Philbeat (Singapore creative company).
RUN! RUN! RUN! www.kaisyngtan.com
RUN! RUN! RUN! Biennale www.kaisyngtan.com/r3fest #r3fest #runrunrunart #runningstudies
JISC mail: ‘Running cultures’
#MagicCarpet: www.wesatonamat.weebly.com #MagicCarpet
RUN! RUN! RUN! International Body for Research www.kaisyngtan.com
https://www.kcl.ac.uk/people/kai-syng-tan
E: [email protected]
W: www.kaisyngtan.com/artful
Dr Kai Syng Tan FRSA PFHEA is an artist, consultant, curator and academic who is concerned with the body and mind in motion in a world in motion and commotion. She is best known for gathering diverse and divergent bodies and bodies of knowledge to engineer spaces of ‘productive antagonisms’ (Latham & Tan 2016) across disciplinary, geopolitical and cultural boundaries, in what she calls an interdisciplinary ‘ill-disciplined’ approach (Tan & Asherson 2018). Marked by an 'eclectic style and cheeky attitude' (Sydney Morning Herald 2006), 'radical interdisciplinarity' (Alan Latham 2016) and ‘positive atmosphere’ (Guardian 2014), Kai’s performance-lectures, installation, film, critical and creative text have been featured at Biennale of Sydney, Documenta (European Artistic Research Network conference) and Tokyo Designers’ Week. Venues include Science Museum, Southbank Centre, MOMA (New York), Royal Geographical Society and Moscow’s Dom Muzyiki. Media engagement include BBC Radio3 and Fuji TV. Recognition includes National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement Images Award (Culture Change) and San Francisco International Film Festival Golden Gate Award. Collections include Museum of London and Fukuoka Art Museum. She has taught in more than 40 higher education institutions (BA-PhD) as lecturer, programme leader and examiner, including King’s College London, Royal College of Art, Australian National University, Tama Art University (Tokyo) and Dumaguete University (Philippines).
Kai is described as ‘absolutely instrumental’ (Gregg Whelan 2015) in opening up what could be called ‘Running Studies’, which explores running as an arts and humanities discourse. This draws on her PhD research which was conducted at Slade School of Fine Art. Her Arts Council England funded Unlimited commission, #MagicCarpet, explores mind wandering, difference and neuro-diversity and has been enjoyed by more than 9000 people and said to ‘create a family for people with ADHD’ (review, The Psychologist). Co-created with disabled colleagues, the £4m Opening and Closing Ceremonies of 8th ASEAN Para Games (with Kai as Visual and Communications Director) was applauded as ‘spectacular’ by Singapore Prime Minister and game-changing and ‘most inclusive’ by the Singapore Association of the Deaf. With Jen Southern and others, she helped to curate the inaugural Arts and Mobilities Network Symposium in Summer 2018 at the Peter Scott Gallery.
Kai is Senior Lecturer at Manchester School of Art, leading a new MA in Executive Arts Leadership. She is also UK Research and Innovation and Arts and Humanities Research Council Peer Review College Member, Neurodiversity In/& Creative Research founder and co-chair (300 members), Hear Me Out trustee, Fermynwoods Contemporary Art trustee, British Journal of Psychiatry Editorial Board member (and first artist), Founder and Lead of RUN! RUN! RUN!, Co-Founder and Manager of the 90-member Running Cultures Research Group, Creative and Cultural Consultant of UK Adult ADHD Network (network for mental health professionals), Advisor to PsychART (linking psychiatry, creativity and the arts, funded by Royal College of Psychiatry), and Visual and Communications Consultant for Philbeat (Singapore creative company).
RUN! RUN! RUN! www.kaisyngtan.com
RUN! RUN! RUN! Biennale www.kaisyngtan.com/r3fest #r3fest #runrunrunart #runningstudies
JISC mail: ‘Running cultures’
#MagicCarpet: www.wesatonamat.weebly.com #MagicCarpet
RUN! RUN! RUN! International Body for Research www.kaisyngtan.com
https://www.kcl.ac.uk/people/kai-syng-tan
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PUBLICATIONS & EXHIBITIONS (selected) by Kai Syng Tan
It was a pleasure working with Kiasma chief curator of performing arts Jonna Strandberg & festival managing director Tiff Zhang.
I used my platform to call out on those that weaponise their autism for harm. Tiff Zhang chaired our chat. The young crowd (some 40+ of them) asked how they can use their privilege. I gave out free copies of my book. I apologised on behalf of my generation for the damages we keep doing.
The Festival's theme of amplifying 'inclusive, communal practices' glowed too at the fab Trans Library and a concert by Sámi artist Hildá Länsman.
*10-minute cut https://vimeo.com/1029497033
*About the book launch: https://kaisyngtan.com/artful/john-hansard-gallery/
*About the book: https://kaisyngtan.com/artful/book-springer-nature/
This is a video recording of the UK launch of a new book Neuro-Futurism and Re-Imagining Leadership: An A-Z towards Collective Liberation (Kai Syng Tan, Palgrave Macmillan 2024).
Drawing on the big-picture thinking and risk-taking approach of neuro-divergence, the book introduces ‘neuro-futurism’ as a toolkit, to re-claim ways to think about and do ‘leadership’ as a diversified, beyond-colonial, neuro-queered and (co-)creative change- and future-making practice.
The launch took place at the John Hansard Gallery in Southampton, UK, 04 September 2024. The evening began with a performance-lecture by Kai. This was set to original composition by Philip Tan (@philiptanmusic on Youtube) and included clips from Kai’s short film commissioned for BBC Culture in Quarantine How to Thrive in 2050! (2021).
The performance-lecture was followed by responses and discussion with guests, artists Jacob V. Joyce and Alastair Eales, in a conversation chaired by John Hansard Gallery director and artist Woodrow Kernohan.
Audience joined in not just by asking questions during the Q&A, but by drawing or writing their responses and reflections directly onto Kai’s digital art piece Catalysing Change Through Artful Agitation (2022), guided by MA Arts and Cultural Leadership staff and students Michael Kurniawan, Tianyi Wang and Lu Han.
Our co-created mapping is available for sale. 100% of the funding raised will be donated to Visualizing Palestine which, since 2012, has been utilising data and research to disrupt dominant narratives about Palestinian.
In this op-ed published for the Valentine's season on the Society for Research into Higher Education (SRHE) blog, I am looking for and locating concepts and actions around a four-letter word - love -- to counter hate, bias, harm and kill-ings.
I share some of my own efforts and aspirations within and outside of the ivory tower. As Paolo Freire states, education’s mission is to build a world where it is easier to love.
The radical pedagogist aside, James Baldwin and bell hooks also make cameos, as did several contemporary exceptional decolonial movers, shakers and change-makers whom I have been (un-)learning from.
I pay tribute to my own students from the inaugural MA Arts and Cultural Leadership programme @maaclwsa too, whose openness and willingness to embrace love and other radical EDI-focused framings of leadership have been humbling.
The article is a call to co-create ways with fellow artist-lovers, to love-bomb the classroom and beyond, with oxytocin, justice, solidarity, humanisation, liberation and joy, so as to move towards freedom, for 2024 and beyond.
Read short version on Council for Higher Education in Art and Design (CHEAD) website 14th February 2024
- Descriptions of films in the New Asian Currents Official Selection
- Description of juror Kai Syng Tan's 'How to Thrive in 2050' (2021, 14 minutes) and 'Chlorine Addiction' (2001, 44 minutes)
Artist Dr Véronique Chance's website: http://veroniquechance.com/index.php
My 2016 article relating running with the (anti)migrant crisis: https://www.thersa.org/blog/2016/11/what-has-running--got-to-do-with-the-migrant-crisis
Drawing on a keynote I gave last November to European League of Institutes of the Arts’ Teachers Academy (ELIA, with 300,000 members from 282 HEIs), and my film on BBC iPlayer on a neurofuturistic 2050 (How to Thrive in 2050!, 2021), this op-ed Using Tentacular Pedagogy to change the HE culture outlines an inclusive and heuristic (co-) creative teaching/learning praxis that I term ‘tentacular pedagogy’ (TP), that aims to make creative arts in Higher Education more inclusive and socially-engaged, and for CA-HE to play a more (pro-)active leadership role within HE and beyond in nurturing a more creative and compassionate future, amid a moment of multiple, perma- and omni-crises within UK HE and beyond. The op-ed was published on the The Society for Research into Higher Education (SRHE) blog. Founded in 1966, SRHE is a UK-based international learned society concerned to advance understanding of higher education, especially through the insights, perspectives and knowledge offered by systematic research and scholarship. The Society aims to be the leading international society in the field, as to both the support and the dissemination of research. The blog has 187 followers, and SRHE has 5,300+ Twitter followers.
Read abridged version on Clore leadership website: https://www.cloreleadership.org/cultural-leadership/towards-anti-racist-fine-art-phd
This article outlines three actions for the supervisor, student and examiner to introduce a level of anti-racist consciousness in the journey of the Fine Art Ph.D. The steps are intended as ‘warm-ups’ within and towards more comprehensive, longer term strategies for individuals, departments, faculties and universities, to nurture communities of anti-racist researchers and make UK HE anti-racist. Change takes time, negotiations are unfolding and my brushstrokes are broad. But if the heart of any Ph.D. endeavour is about the development of critical insight, not just by the student into a knowledge area or problem, but about their own position as autonomous researchers, not just within their fields but the wider HE sector and beyond, an actively anti-racist agenda must be integral. I wish to critique my own position as a non-White researcher who has signed up to the neo-liberal, ‘post-race’ university. I welcome feedback, and seek to lay the ground for further work by myself and others. This is my call for researchers in Fine Art and UK HE at large to step up.
*Watch playlist of RAN recordings here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBnIr5jFWQujxPOezTK07YhTowf3T0RVl
*Read about RAN call-out and contexts here: https://kaisyngtan.com/artful/ran-callout/
*See tweets here: https://twitter.com/search?q=runningartfully&src=typed_query #runningartfully
*Learn more about how the winners of inaugural RAN awards, Taey Iohe (50:53) and Run the World/Manjeet Mann (04:27:31) are changing the world, one step at a time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSz92LFN9UI&list=PLBnIr5jFWQujxPOezTK07YhTowf3T0RVl&index=2&t=7712s
This was the slideshow for my opening speech for the Running Artfully Network launch. RAN reframes running as an artistic intervention to unpick our time of multiple global crises. At the 26 February Friday launch 10:00-17:00GMT, we presented 22 new insights into climate change, mental health, tech, inequality through running + art, poetry, theatre, sound and more by artists, poets, academics and more from UK and Europe.
The launch is a new artist-led iteration of RUN! RUN! RUN! founded by Kai Syng Tan. Since 2014, this has helped to widen ‘Running Studies’ as a creative and more inclusive discourse, away from elite bodyminds and from sport, and which has been covered in Guardian (2014), BBC (2017) and presented the work of 40 runners, artists and academics across 5 venues including a stadium in Cardiff and Paris School of Culture, and formed an 80-member global Running Cultures Research Group. The new RAN online launch event features contributions from: Fiona Adamson, Elisa Hererra Altamirano, Véronique Chance, Beth Clayton, Kathryn Cooper, Andrew Filmer, Gongle, Kathryn Lawson Hughes, Taey Iohe, Manjeet Mann, Victoria Ohuruogu, Natalie Pace, David Sidley, Dan Simpson, James Steventon, Matti Tainio, Kai Syng Tan, Nik Wakefield, Sharon Wilson and Chris Wright. The launch is supported by Anglia Ruskin University, Arts Council England, Fermynwoods Contemporary Art, Manchester School of Art and RUN! RUN! RUN!
What could or should 2050 look like? How can we mobilise technology to work with our bodies and minds to create sights/sites of artful intervention? Will we augment reality? Will we see with our body? Will we kill cinema? Will we kill the film school? Will we rid digital poverty and create digital wealth? Will we celebrate the visionaries? Will the art school up its game? Will artists fight big tech? Will artists be finally appreciated (and properly paid) as not just makers of art objects, but makers of change, thought leaders and creative problem-solvers? Apart from ‘curating’ perfect ‘insta’ posts and another blockbuster art show, will curators be tasked to refocus on healing and guiding - which are the original meanings of ‘curating’ — and use art to heal culture wars and bridge social divides? By the next generation, will schools stop failing or boring people who can’t sit still, and teach across the arts and sciences, to create the next generation of Leonardo Da Vinci-s, whose dyslexia and ADHD are behind his prolificacy and polymathy? Will we finally look out for and look after one another? Drawing on and extending a keynote lecture that painted a vision of a neurodiversity-led future that Tan presented to 130 Royal Society of Arts Fellows last summer, this new performance-lecture is a love letter to cinema and raises a few questions to invite us to think about a post-pandemic future that is more inclusive and creative.
This is the 2020 lockdown edition of a workshop Practice, Movement and Play in Learning for the module 'The Arts, Culture & Education and Learning, Participation & the Southbank Centre' Module, as part of the MA in Education in Arts and Cultural Settings, at the School of Education, Communication and Society, King's College London, which I have been delivering since 2019 at the invitation of Dr Anwar Tlili.
I delivered two seminars this year which enabled students to respond to the points raised in the recorded lecture, one during midday, and another in the evening. What lively, international cohorts they were. Engaged, inquisitive and outspoken, both sessions went slightly over. Feedback has been consistently positive. One email from a student thanked me for reminding them of the purpose of art and education, to which I thanked them for reminding me of the meaning of what I do.
LINKS:
Watch recorded clip and feedback here: https://kaisyngtan.com/artful/contact-performingborders/
See slide show (with bibliography) here: https://issuu.com/kaisyngtan/docs/2020sep19_artfulagitation_biblio_lowres
Event:
https://howlround.com/happenings/catalysing-change-through-artful-agitation-part-i-be-ill-disciplined
https://contactmcr.com/shows/be-ill-disciplined/
https://performingborders.live/commissions/be-ill-disciplined-performance-lecture-by-kai-syng-tan
https://performingborders.live/2020/09/14/be-ill-disciplined-public-lecture-workshop-by-kai-syng-tan/
https://performingborders.live/performingborderslive20/pblive20-programme-march-november-2020/
COMMISSION + CREDITS:
This performance-lecture was commissioned by Contact Theatre (Manchester) and PerformingBorders. HowlRound Theatre Commons (Boston/US) live-streamed the 1 hour event. The event was sold out and attended by people in the UK and beyonod (including from Melbourne Australia), and was followed by a 1-hour workshop attended by 8 young people aged 21-30, with priority for people who are neurodivergent, BAME and/or a working class background. Live tweeting was by Queer Arts Project (London). Artist Ashokkumar Mistry led the Q&A and it was he who described the performance-lecture as a 'mind map' and 'drawing with words'. Music by Philip Tan (philbeat.com) welcomed people as they entered the Zoom space. Andrew Howell provided live transcription.
SYNOPSIS:
“We need new compasses, fresh tools, and untried directions.” With the pandemic, Black Lives Matter, and the ongoing crises in climate, health, and technological control, we’ve all been thinking a lot about leadership. What makes a ‘good’ leader? What could a new kind of leader look like?
As artists, curators, creative producers and theatre-makers, how can we make art, make shows and make change?
Kai Syng Tan is an artist, curator and academic. She argues that artists – especially artists with ‘non-standard’ and neurodiverse ways of thinking – can help invent new solutions to the major challenges facing our societies, and work to co-create a fairer world. In this online performance lecture, Kai will explore how creativity and neurodiversity can drive social change.
‘Normal’ hasn’t worked, so we need leaders with atypical ways of being, thinking, making, and organising for our ‘new normal’. Be Ill-disciplined invites you to critically and creatively explore leadership – and to think about yourself as a leader. The lecture will include a chance for discussion and questions.
ABOUT THE COLLABORATORS
Performingborders: Part of performingbordersLIVE20 programme (March – November 2020). performingborders is a space for artistic research and creation that explores physical, cultural, juridical, racial, gendered, class, and everyday borders through live art and performance practices. In partnership with Contact Theatre and supported by the Arts Council England.
Contact Theatre: We are the leading national theatre and arts venue to place young people at the decision-making heart of everything. At Contact, young people aged 13-30 genuinely lead, working alongside staff in deciding the artistic programme, making staff appointments and act as full Board members.The result is an outstanding, diverse and accessible artistic programme for everyone.
HowlRound TV is a global, commons-based peer produced, open access livestreaming and video archive project stewarded by the nonprofit HowlRound.
HowlRound TV is a free and shared resource for live conversations and performances relevant to the world's performing arts and cultural fields. Its mission is to break geographic isolation, promote resource sharing, and to develop our knowledge commons collectively. Participate in a community of peer organizations revolutionizing the flow of information, knowledge, and access in our field by becoming a producer and co-producing with us.
In: Handbook on Methods for Mobilities Research, Edward Elgar Publishing. Ed: Edited by Monika Büscher, Lancaster University, UK, Malene Freudendal-Pedersen, Aalborg University, Denmark, Sven Kesselring, Nürtingen-Geislingen University, Germany and Nikolaj Grauslund Kristensen, Aalborg University, Denmark 2020 ISBN: 978 1 78811 545 2 Extent: 448 pp
https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/usd/handbook-of-research-methods-and-applications-for-mobilities-9781788115452.html
If humanity is heading for collapse, could ‘running artfully’ generate insights to extend thinking and practice around how mobilities research entangles with art and running, and how we write about this? Following in the footsteps of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Reveries of the Solitary Walker (Rousseau 1979) I structure this chapter as ten runs, and lay down initial pathways to spark interest for this inquiry.
http://ijmar.org/v7n3/20-028.html
What could a visual-led approach to the learning and teaching of complex issues look like for a short online synchronous session? Through a playful performance-lecture exploring concepts in diversity, interdisciplinarity and social change entitled What could a neurodiversity-led 2050 look like?, this paper outlines the possibilities of visual-centred approach, using the ubiquitous Microsoft software PowerPoint (or open-sourced equivalents like Google Slides and Prezi). It seeks to contribute to discourses and practices around role of visual approaches in Higher Education (HE) to address 'difficult' topics like power and inequality in an engaging manner, and to empower learners as active participants, including those who may be think visually, such as dyslexic learners. Such approaches will be urgent in a reality characterised by profound socio-political injustice highlighted by Black Lives Matter (BLM), and amid a global pandemic, where teaching occurs online, and where learners and teachers alike may be short of time, attention and resources. Highlighting techniques and perspectives from art, film and neurodiversity, it invites the consideration of the PowerPoint performance-lecture as a simple yet engaging and responsive process for higher order learning and creative thinking. A secondary point of the article to call for HE to itself apply a degree of critical and creative thinking about its own position, to use self-knowledge to do better, in order to move forward. It welcomes feedback and challenges, and calls for the creation of yet more playful, innovative, visual-led approaches in the learning and teaching of complex issues in Higher Education.
This is the slideshow for my new performance-lecture at Royal Society of Arts which was a double bill. It was hosted by Rachel Godwin and attended by 130 people at a point.
Event:
9 July Thursday 11am-12pm.
RSA VIRTUAL COFFEEHOUSE CONVERSATION: NEURODIVERSITY AND THE FUTURE OF WORK. Doublebill: Dr Kai Syng Tan (Neurodiversity In/& Creative Research Network, KCL, MMU) and Dr Thom Kirkwood (Autism Network Scotland, University of Strathclyde).
https://tinyurl.com/y9a55f5f
Related links:
https://tinyurl.com/y8enowyq
https://tinyurl.com/uqgw859
https://tinyurl.com/y869ud5p
http://www.kaisyngtan.com/artful
It was a pleasure working with Kiasma chief curator of performing arts Jonna Strandberg & festival managing director Tiff Zhang.
I used my platform to call out on those that weaponise their autism for harm. Tiff Zhang chaired our chat. The young crowd (some 40+ of them) asked how they can use their privilege. I gave out free copies of my book. I apologised on behalf of my generation for the damages we keep doing.
The Festival's theme of amplifying 'inclusive, communal practices' glowed too at the fab Trans Library and a concert by Sámi artist Hildá Länsman.
*10-minute cut https://vimeo.com/1029497033
*About the book launch: https://kaisyngtan.com/artful/john-hansard-gallery/
*About the book: https://kaisyngtan.com/artful/book-springer-nature/
This is a video recording of the UK launch of a new book Neuro-Futurism and Re-Imagining Leadership: An A-Z towards Collective Liberation (Kai Syng Tan, Palgrave Macmillan 2024).
Drawing on the big-picture thinking and risk-taking approach of neuro-divergence, the book introduces ‘neuro-futurism’ as a toolkit, to re-claim ways to think about and do ‘leadership’ as a diversified, beyond-colonial, neuro-queered and (co-)creative change- and future-making practice.
The launch took place at the John Hansard Gallery in Southampton, UK, 04 September 2024. The evening began with a performance-lecture by Kai. This was set to original composition by Philip Tan (@philiptanmusic on Youtube) and included clips from Kai’s short film commissioned for BBC Culture in Quarantine How to Thrive in 2050! (2021).
The performance-lecture was followed by responses and discussion with guests, artists Jacob V. Joyce and Alastair Eales, in a conversation chaired by John Hansard Gallery director and artist Woodrow Kernohan.
Audience joined in not just by asking questions during the Q&A, but by drawing or writing their responses and reflections directly onto Kai’s digital art piece Catalysing Change Through Artful Agitation (2022), guided by MA Arts and Cultural Leadership staff and students Michael Kurniawan, Tianyi Wang and Lu Han.
Our co-created mapping is available for sale. 100% of the funding raised will be donated to Visualizing Palestine which, since 2012, has been utilising data and research to disrupt dominant narratives about Palestinian.
In this op-ed published for the Valentine's season on the Society for Research into Higher Education (SRHE) blog, I am looking for and locating concepts and actions around a four-letter word - love -- to counter hate, bias, harm and kill-ings.
I share some of my own efforts and aspirations within and outside of the ivory tower. As Paolo Freire states, education’s mission is to build a world where it is easier to love.
The radical pedagogist aside, James Baldwin and bell hooks also make cameos, as did several contemporary exceptional decolonial movers, shakers and change-makers whom I have been (un-)learning from.
I pay tribute to my own students from the inaugural MA Arts and Cultural Leadership programme @maaclwsa too, whose openness and willingness to embrace love and other radical EDI-focused framings of leadership have been humbling.
The article is a call to co-create ways with fellow artist-lovers, to love-bomb the classroom and beyond, with oxytocin, justice, solidarity, humanisation, liberation and joy, so as to move towards freedom, for 2024 and beyond.
Read short version on Council for Higher Education in Art and Design (CHEAD) website 14th February 2024
- Descriptions of films in the New Asian Currents Official Selection
- Description of juror Kai Syng Tan's 'How to Thrive in 2050' (2021, 14 minutes) and 'Chlorine Addiction' (2001, 44 minutes)
Artist Dr Véronique Chance's website: http://veroniquechance.com/index.php
My 2016 article relating running with the (anti)migrant crisis: https://www.thersa.org/blog/2016/11/what-has-running--got-to-do-with-the-migrant-crisis
Drawing on a keynote I gave last November to European League of Institutes of the Arts’ Teachers Academy (ELIA, with 300,000 members from 282 HEIs), and my film on BBC iPlayer on a neurofuturistic 2050 (How to Thrive in 2050!, 2021), this op-ed Using Tentacular Pedagogy to change the HE culture outlines an inclusive and heuristic (co-) creative teaching/learning praxis that I term ‘tentacular pedagogy’ (TP), that aims to make creative arts in Higher Education more inclusive and socially-engaged, and for CA-HE to play a more (pro-)active leadership role within HE and beyond in nurturing a more creative and compassionate future, amid a moment of multiple, perma- and omni-crises within UK HE and beyond. The op-ed was published on the The Society for Research into Higher Education (SRHE) blog. Founded in 1966, SRHE is a UK-based international learned society concerned to advance understanding of higher education, especially through the insights, perspectives and knowledge offered by systematic research and scholarship. The Society aims to be the leading international society in the field, as to both the support and the dissemination of research. The blog has 187 followers, and SRHE has 5,300+ Twitter followers.
Read abridged version on Clore leadership website: https://www.cloreleadership.org/cultural-leadership/towards-anti-racist-fine-art-phd
This article outlines three actions for the supervisor, student and examiner to introduce a level of anti-racist consciousness in the journey of the Fine Art Ph.D. The steps are intended as ‘warm-ups’ within and towards more comprehensive, longer term strategies for individuals, departments, faculties and universities, to nurture communities of anti-racist researchers and make UK HE anti-racist. Change takes time, negotiations are unfolding and my brushstrokes are broad. But if the heart of any Ph.D. endeavour is about the development of critical insight, not just by the student into a knowledge area or problem, but about their own position as autonomous researchers, not just within their fields but the wider HE sector and beyond, an actively anti-racist agenda must be integral. I wish to critique my own position as a non-White researcher who has signed up to the neo-liberal, ‘post-race’ university. I welcome feedback, and seek to lay the ground for further work by myself and others. This is my call for researchers in Fine Art and UK HE at large to step up.
*Watch playlist of RAN recordings here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBnIr5jFWQujxPOezTK07YhTowf3T0RVl
*Read about RAN call-out and contexts here: https://kaisyngtan.com/artful/ran-callout/
*See tweets here: https://twitter.com/search?q=runningartfully&src=typed_query #runningartfully
*Learn more about how the winners of inaugural RAN awards, Taey Iohe (50:53) and Run the World/Manjeet Mann (04:27:31) are changing the world, one step at a time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSz92LFN9UI&list=PLBnIr5jFWQujxPOezTK07YhTowf3T0RVl&index=2&t=7712s
This was the slideshow for my opening speech for the Running Artfully Network launch. RAN reframes running as an artistic intervention to unpick our time of multiple global crises. At the 26 February Friday launch 10:00-17:00GMT, we presented 22 new insights into climate change, mental health, tech, inequality through running + art, poetry, theatre, sound and more by artists, poets, academics and more from UK and Europe.
The launch is a new artist-led iteration of RUN! RUN! RUN! founded by Kai Syng Tan. Since 2014, this has helped to widen ‘Running Studies’ as a creative and more inclusive discourse, away from elite bodyminds and from sport, and which has been covered in Guardian (2014), BBC (2017) and presented the work of 40 runners, artists and academics across 5 venues including a stadium in Cardiff and Paris School of Culture, and formed an 80-member global Running Cultures Research Group. The new RAN online launch event features contributions from: Fiona Adamson, Elisa Hererra Altamirano, Véronique Chance, Beth Clayton, Kathryn Cooper, Andrew Filmer, Gongle, Kathryn Lawson Hughes, Taey Iohe, Manjeet Mann, Victoria Ohuruogu, Natalie Pace, David Sidley, Dan Simpson, James Steventon, Matti Tainio, Kai Syng Tan, Nik Wakefield, Sharon Wilson and Chris Wright. The launch is supported by Anglia Ruskin University, Arts Council England, Fermynwoods Contemporary Art, Manchester School of Art and RUN! RUN! RUN!
What could or should 2050 look like? How can we mobilise technology to work with our bodies and minds to create sights/sites of artful intervention? Will we augment reality? Will we see with our body? Will we kill cinema? Will we kill the film school? Will we rid digital poverty and create digital wealth? Will we celebrate the visionaries? Will the art school up its game? Will artists fight big tech? Will artists be finally appreciated (and properly paid) as not just makers of art objects, but makers of change, thought leaders and creative problem-solvers? Apart from ‘curating’ perfect ‘insta’ posts and another blockbuster art show, will curators be tasked to refocus on healing and guiding - which are the original meanings of ‘curating’ — and use art to heal culture wars and bridge social divides? By the next generation, will schools stop failing or boring people who can’t sit still, and teach across the arts and sciences, to create the next generation of Leonardo Da Vinci-s, whose dyslexia and ADHD are behind his prolificacy and polymathy? Will we finally look out for and look after one another? Drawing on and extending a keynote lecture that painted a vision of a neurodiversity-led future that Tan presented to 130 Royal Society of Arts Fellows last summer, this new performance-lecture is a love letter to cinema and raises a few questions to invite us to think about a post-pandemic future that is more inclusive and creative.
This is the 2020 lockdown edition of a workshop Practice, Movement and Play in Learning for the module 'The Arts, Culture & Education and Learning, Participation & the Southbank Centre' Module, as part of the MA in Education in Arts and Cultural Settings, at the School of Education, Communication and Society, King's College London, which I have been delivering since 2019 at the invitation of Dr Anwar Tlili.
I delivered two seminars this year which enabled students to respond to the points raised in the recorded lecture, one during midday, and another in the evening. What lively, international cohorts they were. Engaged, inquisitive and outspoken, both sessions went slightly over. Feedback has been consistently positive. One email from a student thanked me for reminding them of the purpose of art and education, to which I thanked them for reminding me of the meaning of what I do.
LINKS:
Watch recorded clip and feedback here: https://kaisyngtan.com/artful/contact-performingborders/
See slide show (with bibliography) here: https://issuu.com/kaisyngtan/docs/2020sep19_artfulagitation_biblio_lowres
Event:
https://howlround.com/happenings/catalysing-change-through-artful-agitation-part-i-be-ill-disciplined
https://contactmcr.com/shows/be-ill-disciplined/
https://performingborders.live/commissions/be-ill-disciplined-performance-lecture-by-kai-syng-tan
https://performingborders.live/2020/09/14/be-ill-disciplined-public-lecture-workshop-by-kai-syng-tan/
https://performingborders.live/performingborderslive20/pblive20-programme-march-november-2020/
COMMISSION + CREDITS:
This performance-lecture was commissioned by Contact Theatre (Manchester) and PerformingBorders. HowlRound Theatre Commons (Boston/US) live-streamed the 1 hour event. The event was sold out and attended by people in the UK and beyonod (including from Melbourne Australia), and was followed by a 1-hour workshop attended by 8 young people aged 21-30, with priority for people who are neurodivergent, BAME and/or a working class background. Live tweeting was by Queer Arts Project (London). Artist Ashokkumar Mistry led the Q&A and it was he who described the performance-lecture as a 'mind map' and 'drawing with words'. Music by Philip Tan (philbeat.com) welcomed people as they entered the Zoom space. Andrew Howell provided live transcription.
SYNOPSIS:
“We need new compasses, fresh tools, and untried directions.” With the pandemic, Black Lives Matter, and the ongoing crises in climate, health, and technological control, we’ve all been thinking a lot about leadership. What makes a ‘good’ leader? What could a new kind of leader look like?
As artists, curators, creative producers and theatre-makers, how can we make art, make shows and make change?
Kai Syng Tan is an artist, curator and academic. She argues that artists – especially artists with ‘non-standard’ and neurodiverse ways of thinking – can help invent new solutions to the major challenges facing our societies, and work to co-create a fairer world. In this online performance lecture, Kai will explore how creativity and neurodiversity can drive social change.
‘Normal’ hasn’t worked, so we need leaders with atypical ways of being, thinking, making, and organising for our ‘new normal’. Be Ill-disciplined invites you to critically and creatively explore leadership – and to think about yourself as a leader. The lecture will include a chance for discussion and questions.
ABOUT THE COLLABORATORS
Performingborders: Part of performingbordersLIVE20 programme (March – November 2020). performingborders is a space for artistic research and creation that explores physical, cultural, juridical, racial, gendered, class, and everyday borders through live art and performance practices. In partnership with Contact Theatre and supported by the Arts Council England.
Contact Theatre: We are the leading national theatre and arts venue to place young people at the decision-making heart of everything. At Contact, young people aged 13-30 genuinely lead, working alongside staff in deciding the artistic programme, making staff appointments and act as full Board members.The result is an outstanding, diverse and accessible artistic programme for everyone.
HowlRound TV is a global, commons-based peer produced, open access livestreaming and video archive project stewarded by the nonprofit HowlRound.
HowlRound TV is a free and shared resource for live conversations and performances relevant to the world's performing arts and cultural fields. Its mission is to break geographic isolation, promote resource sharing, and to develop our knowledge commons collectively. Participate in a community of peer organizations revolutionizing the flow of information, knowledge, and access in our field by becoming a producer and co-producing with us.
In: Handbook on Methods for Mobilities Research, Edward Elgar Publishing. Ed: Edited by Monika Büscher, Lancaster University, UK, Malene Freudendal-Pedersen, Aalborg University, Denmark, Sven Kesselring, Nürtingen-Geislingen University, Germany and Nikolaj Grauslund Kristensen, Aalborg University, Denmark 2020 ISBN: 978 1 78811 545 2 Extent: 448 pp
https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/usd/handbook-of-research-methods-and-applications-for-mobilities-9781788115452.html
If humanity is heading for collapse, could ‘running artfully’ generate insights to extend thinking and practice around how mobilities research entangles with art and running, and how we write about this? Following in the footsteps of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Reveries of the Solitary Walker (Rousseau 1979) I structure this chapter as ten runs, and lay down initial pathways to spark interest for this inquiry.
http://ijmar.org/v7n3/20-028.html
What could a visual-led approach to the learning and teaching of complex issues look like for a short online synchronous session? Through a playful performance-lecture exploring concepts in diversity, interdisciplinarity and social change entitled What could a neurodiversity-led 2050 look like?, this paper outlines the possibilities of visual-centred approach, using the ubiquitous Microsoft software PowerPoint (or open-sourced equivalents like Google Slides and Prezi). It seeks to contribute to discourses and practices around role of visual approaches in Higher Education (HE) to address 'difficult' topics like power and inequality in an engaging manner, and to empower learners as active participants, including those who may be think visually, such as dyslexic learners. Such approaches will be urgent in a reality characterised by profound socio-political injustice highlighted by Black Lives Matter (BLM), and amid a global pandemic, where teaching occurs online, and where learners and teachers alike may be short of time, attention and resources. Highlighting techniques and perspectives from art, film and neurodiversity, it invites the consideration of the PowerPoint performance-lecture as a simple yet engaging and responsive process for higher order learning and creative thinking. A secondary point of the article to call for HE to itself apply a degree of critical and creative thinking about its own position, to use self-knowledge to do better, in order to move forward. It welcomes feedback and challenges, and calls for the creation of yet more playful, innovative, visual-led approaches in the learning and teaching of complex issues in Higher Education.
This is the slideshow for my new performance-lecture at Royal Society of Arts which was a double bill. It was hosted by Rachel Godwin and attended by 130 people at a point.
Event:
9 July Thursday 11am-12pm.
RSA VIRTUAL COFFEEHOUSE CONVERSATION: NEURODIVERSITY AND THE FUTURE OF WORK. Doublebill: Dr Kai Syng Tan (Neurodiversity In/& Creative Research Network, KCL, MMU) and Dr Thom Kirkwood (Autism Network Scotland, University of Strathclyde).
https://tinyurl.com/y9a55f5f
Related links:
https://tinyurl.com/y8enowyq
https://tinyurl.com/uqgw859
https://tinyurl.com/y869ud5p
http://www.kaisyngtan.com/artful
‘Other conferences could take a leaf out of #r3fest’s book’ − Dr Alex Lockwood, Guardian 2014. Of the pioneering first biennale (RUN! RUN! RUN! International Festival of Running) exploring running as an arts and humanities discourse.
Join 3 female artist-researcher-runners Dr Kai Syng Tan, Annie Grove-White and Dr Carali McCall in 3 energising events in 3 cities. The RUN! RUN! RUN! Biennale 2016 #r3fest draws on the success of the inaugural RUN! RUN! RUN! International Festival of Running which took place at the Slade Research Centre in 2014. At the second run, now re-named RUN! RUN! RUN! Biennale 2016, we will explore running as a metaphor and methodology for us to think about the body, gender, ageing, the city and borders. With guests and colleagues including representatives from charities Free to Run (an NGO for running for women and girls in Afghanistan), A Mile In Her Shoes (a running group for homeless women) and Headway East London (a charity supporting people affected by brain injury), Eddie Ladd (international performance maker), Dr Karen Throsby (University of Leeds), Joe King (Royal College of Art), Simon Freeman (Like the Wind), Dr Andrew Filmer (Aberystwyth University), Catrin Kean (writer), Dr Alan Latham (UCL), Amelia Johnstone (illustrator) and Sarah Brown (Leeds Art Gallery) and Dr Debbie Lisle (Queen’s Belfast). RUN! RUN! RUN! Biennale 2016 is sponsored by Leeds College of Art. Enquires: Kai [email protected] www.kaisyngtan.com/r3fest
Book your free tickets now:
How does running (dis)connect people across borders?
November 21 / Leeds: Discussion. 2-4pm. MA Creative Studio.
Leeds College of Art Blenheim Walk, LS2 9AQ
http://r3fest2016_leeds.eventbrite.co.uk
How does running (dis)connect people with the city?
November 23 / London: Screening. 6-8pm. Exhibition Room. Pearson Building
Department of Geography. UCL Gower Street, WC1E 6BT
http://r3fest2016_london.eventbrite.co.uk
How does running (dis)connect people with their body?
November 24 / Cardiff: Performance. 6-9pm. National Indoors Athletics Centre.
Cardiff Metropolitan University CF23 6XD
http://r3fest2016_cardiff.eventbrite.co.uk
1. A series of workshop entitled Anti Adult RUN! RUN! RUN! Masterclass #antiadultrun (September 5 from 10:00hrs, Kuopio Sports Hall, then 13:00hrs onwards at Kuopio Market Square), and
2. a paper/performance-lecture, Running into each other: RUN! RUN! RUN! A Collaboration (3 September, 1510-1540hrs).
Open attached PDF for description and aims of each.
Do COME! COME! COME! for some unadulterated FUN! FUN! FUN!
RUN! RUN! RUN! Curate – lead – a run. Free of charge. Every body welcome. Let’s animate the city. Let’s create a new movement. Come come come. Exercise with a twist (of art). Join this not run-of-the-(tread)mill running club. Meet every second Thursday of the month, 17:15hrs, at the steps of Leeds Art Gallery. Coming up: Mar 12, Apr 9, May 14, Jun 11, Jul 9, Aug13, Sep 10, Oct 9, Nov 12, Dec 10. Each route (5-10km) is ‘curated’ by someone. Each ‘curator’ then nominates someone else. This ‘someone’ could be you. Keen to curate? Grab Kai +44 (0)113 2028121 <[email protected]>. For more information: kaisyngtan.com/portfolio/leeds #runrunrunleeds @kaisyngtan
Since at least the 1970’s, the world has experienced what British runner Sir Roger Bannister calls a ‘running boom’ (cited in Newsholme & Leech 1983, p.vi).The London Marathon welcomes nearly 40,000 runners annually (The London Marathon Limited 2013). Worldwide, a marathon held daily, and Palestine held its first – named Right To Movement – last year. Lest you thought that this was a passing fad, think again, for we have run for 2 million years. Our ancestors ran for up to 6 hours across 20 miles to hunt for food (Liebenberg 2008). After all, human beings are ‘born to run’ long distances (Bramble & Lieberman 2004), endowed as we are with unique physical attributes – as well as an indefatigable ‘ability to dream far ahead’ (Heinrich 2002 p.177). In other words, running may have the potential to be worked through not just as a physical process but a poetic one, and not only as a subject matter but methodology and practice, not just as an activity/verb but a concept/noun. Running may even give the cultural tradition of walking a run for its money, given how it may be conducive to creativity. Did you know, for instance, Alan Turing was said to have invented the computer in the middle of a run (Burfoot 2007)? In fact, novelist Joyce Carol Oates finds running so stimulating that she even recommends it as the antidote to the writer’s block (1999). After all, given our technology-saturated reality, what better counterpoint than running? While we obsess about the ‘digital’ – of the ones and zeroes of the computer – in this day and age, we cannot forget that we use our bodily ‘digits’ – not just that of the fingers that zap the screens, but that of our tenacious toes that keep our feet on the ground. And who can forget feisty ‘Lola’, who ran and transformed her fate in the film Run Lola Run (Tykwer 1998), or Colin of The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, for whom running is a political act? Still unconvinced? Run through the OED, and you will find no fewer than 81 definitions and conjugations for the word ‘run’ – which run across 14 pages (Simpson & Weiner 1989, vols.XVI, p. 250–264). In fact, the Latin etymology of ‘discourse’ refers to ‘running from one place to another’ (Blackburn 2008 p.102). No wonder in the past decade, philosophers, novelists, geographers and neuroscientists have been harnessing running in their discourses (Austin 2007; Murakami 2008; Latham and McCormack 2010; Mattson 2012). Even artists and groups like Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba and Critical Run are jumping up and down about running.
NOT YOUR RUN-OF-THE-MILL CONFERENCE
The time is ripe for us to get together to exchange notes, debate, probe, critique and celebrate everything about running. Run Run Run: An International Festival of Running 1.0 is a cross-disciplinary event by runners, for runners – and the sceptics, as well as everyone else from all walks of life including those who prefer to sit on the fence. This will be the first time such an eclectic group of people flock (and run) together to explore the territories – thus far, to come – of running as a subject matter, methodology and practice, in the forms of 8-minute ‘Talk Fests’, ‘live’ performances, artworks, films, ‘Running London Tours’ and readings. Indeed, we were overwhelmed and heartened by the response we received. Researchers and practitioners from throughout the UK and beyond (Grenoble, Glasgow, Vancouver, Venezuela, Lethbridge, Lancashire, Ljubljana, Singapore, Melbourne, Essex, Newport, Oxford, et al) from a wide range of fields (biomechanics, fine art, performance, social housing, psychiatry, bio- and cultural anthropology, kinesiology, geography, theatre, history, medicine, museum studies et al) have shown interest to be involved in this first-of-its-kind event. This may confirm our observations that the study of running is picking up steam, and academics are increasingly taking running seriously. Running parallel to how running as an exercise or sport has a critical mass of practitioners, there seems to be a small but growing ‘critical mass’ of researchers who study running, and are hungry to meet other like-minded colleagues as well as to take things a step further. This can serve to demonstrate that running has the potential to function as a meaningful way to cut across cross-sections of departments and disciplines, making it something that truly transcends disciplinary and institutional boundaries. This may also prove how running can have mileage and can generate impact within and beyond the academic world.
A RUNDOWN OF THE PROGRAMME
After an ultra-marathon of 6+3 hours running through the submissions, we have nearly finalised the programme, which features exciting mix of bigwigs and newbies working through running in a dazzling array of ways. We are excited to say that a few of these will be premieres, or works-in-progress, so remember that Run Run Run: An International Festival of Running 1.0 was where you first experienced them, and where you provided invaluable feedback to these researchers. In this gig, we are showcasing nearly 40 works. A whopping number by most measures, but perhaps only the tip of the iceberg in terms of what running can offer as a rich territory of study. From this programme, we may identify a few genres or pathways, which may include:
*Running as (physical, mental) exercise: Courtney Kipps, Russell Hitchings; Kris Grint; François Bourque; Carol Williams; Susie Chan;
*Running as creative process (thinking; discourse; drawing; performance; spectacle; sound; looking; expression; metaphor; play; story-telling): Carali McCall; Amelia Johnston and Peter Hathaway; Critical Run; Tom Tykwer’s Run Lola Run; Live Marianne Noven; Alan Latham (filmed lecture); NVA; James Steventon; Kai Syng Tan (film clip); Andrew Filmer; Vybarr Cregan-Reid;
*Running as survival; mortality; autonomy; worldview; existence/existential; as a means to understand human behaviour: Matthew Skinner; Gemma Price; Tarahumaras; Ann Grove-White; Kai Syng Tan; Alan Sillitoe’s Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner; Allen Abramson; Penny Andrews; Live Marianne Noven; Matan Rochlitz and Ivo Gormley;
*Running as means to relate with a site (as a link to outdoors/nature; psychogeography; mapping; wayfinding; as transportation): Guy Watts/Streetscape; Richard Wright; Collectif Totem; Veronique Chance; Simon Cook;
*Running as a means to understand and/or connect with communities: Alan Latham; Gregg Whelan; Blaž Bajič; Tristan Meecham; Ivo Gormley/Goodgym; Little Black Dress Run;
*Running as spirituality, as ritual: Run and Become; Balavan Thomas; Devashishu Torpy; Marathon Monks.
WHAT IS RUNNING? WHAT IS RUN RUN RUN? (WHAT COULD RUNNING DO? WHAT COULD RUN RUN RUN DO?)
It goes without saying that these classifications are by no means distinct but arbitrary, broad, overlapping and fluid. If you are presenting, you may well be cursing and spitting at the screen as you read this – and you should. Indeed, there are possibly as many ways to think about (talking about) running as there are shoe designs and running gaits. One of the things the Festival aims to do is to act as a trigger for us to think about how we can think about running: What are the different ways in which we can talk about running? What can running do? What is running? What could it be? What is it not? Through running, what are the ways in which we can articulate ideas about other things, including critical issues such as the health crisis, creativity, our relationship with the state, and so on? What are the emerging trends in this area of research? What are the evolving contexts? What are the current challenges and opportunities? What might the scope and extent be? Where are the zones of contact and conflict? As possible pioneers of an emerging field, what are the next steps we could/should take? What are our individual and collective aims? Is running the lowest common denominator that brings us together? Or is running possibly something more profound or metaphysical, more grand, more primitive, or is it a mechanism/conduit/ medium/toolkit/app that links us to these modes? (How) Can we work towards outlining a manifesto, map or wayfinder for our colleagues, students, readers and audiences? How can we share resources? How could we compete with or pace one another? How can we join forces and forge new pathways? At the end of the first Festival, what do we leave with (what’s in our – metaphorical – goody bag)? Should we have a Festival 2.0? What’s our action plan?
So, COME COME COME.
*Not one but two keynote speakers: Dr Hayden Lorimer (University of Glasgow) and Professor Gregg Whelan/Lone Twin (Falmouth University)!
*‘Show & Touch’ by paleoanthropologist Dr Matthew Skinner and Ms Gemma Price: of a fossil cast of a 2-million year old early human runner which can serve to remind us, amidst the ‘Nike-fication’/ commodification of running today, of how it all began.
*8-minute ‘Talk Fests’ by expert sports medic Dr Courtney Kipps (London Marathon, Team GB 2012 Olympics & Paralympics et al), artist Ms Jo Volley (who likes to pick up oak apples when she runs and then magically transforms them into ink that she uses in her paintings) and Streetscape (an award-winning landscaping social enterprise for young people that has arisen from founder Guy Watts’ s passion for long distance running).
*‘Film Fest’ by Mr Ivo Gormley: Screening of hit film The Runners (Sheffield Doc Fest; Open City Docs Fest et al) and chat about Goodgym (a group of runners who ‘get fit by doing good’).
*'Running London Tours' by Dr Kris Grint/Bentham Project (through the thrilling West End on the ‘pre-prandial circumgyrations’ of philosopher Jeremy Bentham back in the 1820’s) and Mr Richard Wright (community involvement expert on social transformation in Bloomsbury).
*‘Live’ performance of Run To Draw by Amelia Johnstone and Peter Hathaway,which demonstrates how running can allow us to re-claim fun and be creative.
*A ‘Museum Of Running’ by the Walking or rather Running Encyclopaedia of Running and Curator of Run Run Run itself, Dr Alan Latham, which showcases, amongst other treasures, vintage Nike running shoes and classic Runners’ World magazines from the 1970′s.
Over- over- overdose yourself with all all all about running. Run into other fit and clever folks and make history. Mobilise this occasion as a springboard to question what running can be, to think further/deeper/broader about possibilities of running, and to kickstart collaborations. Run Run Run is a first initiative. and there are plans for further activities. More More More. Soon soon soon (enough). Don’t just sit there and watch. Come join us towards the creation of a new movement.
News article and podcast (6minutes 42seconds) on radical creative non-fiction film against military junta and colonialism in Myanmar by NHK WORLD-JAPAN NEWS 2023 (Japan Public Broadcaster)
NB: There is also a 13-minute 'In-Depth' news story on radical creative non-fiction film against military junta and colonialism in Myanmar by NHK WORLD-JAPAN NEWS 2023 (Japan Public Broadcaster)
OVERVIEW:
Systems of oppression are connected. ‘If we say we abolish the prison-industrial complex, we should also say abolish apartheid, and end the occupation of Palestine’, declares American revolutionary-philosopher-academic and former prisoner Angela Davis (2013). As we cry 'Free Palestine', we are also crying Free Sudan. Free Congo. Free Myanmar. Free Rohingyas. Free Kachins. Free Uyghurs. The call for self-determination is also a call for the end of the prisons, + systems that enable prisons, actual and metaphorical. The term ‘Prison industrial complex’ captures the complex and overlapping interests of government and industry that use surveillance, policing, and imprisonment as solutions to economic, social and political problems, clarifies Critical Resistance. That was why, as juror @YIDFF Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, I chose the film ‘Losing Ground’ for a top award, as I explained in my interview with Japan Public Broadcaster @nhkworldjapan in this 13-minute 'In-Depth' story 'Filmmakers Speak Out about Myanmar' (re-posted with permission). I was proud to go on stage with @limkahwai to announce the Ogawa Shinsuke prize of New Asian Currents (curated by @m5_wakai) to a Myanmar filmmaker. As a former prisoner, they had to remain anonymous. Their film depicts the resistance by people living under military junta, through a highly-restrained and thus powerful setup. The award is our message of solidarity with all creative makers and cultural workers similarly trapped. Your art might catalyse change, I said. Is that wishful thinking? Yes. But I’m an artist. I’m allowed to. In the face of seemingly insurmountable global problems, to feel despair — or to be able to switch off social media — is a luxury. As many critical creatives like Toni Morrison remind us, ‘this is precisely the time when artists go to work’: ‘I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge — even wisdom. Like art.’
0'00": Introduction
1'00": On ‘Losing Ground’
4'20": YIDFF and interview with Kaori Hizume 11 Oct 2023
5'50”: On ‘Above and Below Ground’, another film on Myanmar in New Asian Currents
#FreePalestine #Ceasefire #FightFacism
CONTEXTS:
I was invited as to be a jury member at the prestigious Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival (YIDFF) 2023 in Japan. Yamagata is approximately two hours from Tokyo and is designated UNESCO city of film. Since 1989, YIDFF has played a vital role in the film and arts ecology, having celebrated amongst others the works of iconic post-colonialist filmmaker-composer-theorist Prof. Trinh T. Minh-ha, and Thai auteur Apichatpong Weerasethakul (whose 2021 film stars Tilda Swinton and bagged the Jury Prize at Cannes). I was judge for films for the New Asian Currents (NAC), which focuses on bold, new expressions of the documentary genre on critical issues. There was also a showcase during which I shared my films as a Director, 'How to Thrive in 2050' (2021, commissioned for BBC Culture in Quarantine) and 'Chlorine Addiction; (2000, which was at NAC 2001).
REFLECTIONS:
Amid the era of fake news, AI, streaming and media saturation, film — and especially the documentary film — offers exciting possibilities, not least radical ones that the NAC champions. I was proud to go on stage to announce the winner of the top prize, a filmmaker from Myanmar who had to remain anonymous, having already been imprisoned by the government. Their film Losing Ground depicts the resistance and resilience by people living under military junta through a highly-restrained and yet quietly powerful setup. We spent eight hours till early morning to make our decision, because we know how career-changing and even life-changing such a prize and the financial award can be. We want to send a strong message to this filmmaker, as well as other makers who are similarly trapped or imprisoned, physically and/or metaphorically, that we care, and that we are in solidarity with each and everyone of you, and that your films are making a difference. I’m currently working on three books exploring new definitions of ‘leadership’, with a focus on creativity, anti-oppression, futurity and hope. I was extremely honoured, to be amongst new, visionary leaders of tomorrow who can show us the future of not only documentary filmmaking, but humanity, not least given such volatile times that we find ourselves caught in.
NOTE:
Original NHK clip: youtube.com/watch?v=cKi5fNkW6Bg
Internalised ableism aside, other forces come into play in white-run spaces. We adore the ‘quirks’ of the rich and powerful (one Boris of Partygate), and can’t get enough of Musk and other ‘autistic tech-bro cartoon-tycoons’, as I call them in my forthcoming book. It’s ‘acceptable’, even ‘laudable’, to express your ‘authenticity’ — and by inference, weirdness — but that’s if you’re a white cis-het middle-class man, because expressing your ‘true self’ is a ‘luxury’ that the minoritised can ‘often ill afford’ (Ladkin 2021).
This is why I’ve been vocal and visible. As one of very few cis-women of colour in the academy who’s openly neurodivergent, I help make space for others for whom being different means risking your job, facing aggression, and more. Much of this work is slow-burning, burns, hurts and causes tears, and will take a while. So long as myself and others continue the effort in the background, I'm happy to take on popular media.
I made We Sat On A Mat and Had a Chat and Made Maps! #MagicCarpet (2017-8), an art-psychiatry creative research programme I led as the first artist-in-residence at the world-leading Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre. My mentor was Prof Phil Asherson. Relating ADHD with mind wandering, the project explores the constructs and boundaries of ‘normality’ and normativity.
Across 18 months, I raised questions — for there were no answers! — through 35 exhibitions/workshops,15 articles, 3 podcasts, 13 films, 200 drawings, 24 seminars and lectures. Key was a tapestry, which 10,000 people have viewed or sat on in UK (South London Gallery, Southbank Centre, Science Museum, NESTA) and beyond (Centre for Contemporary Art in Singapore; SOS Dyslexia Conference San Marino). #MagicCarpet won a National award, led to my role as the first artist on an editorial board of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, and enabled me to set up the Neurodiversity In/& Creative Research Network, now a global alliance with 410 members, including neuro-queering’s Nick Walker.
https://kaisyngtan.com/artful/interview-neurodiversity-creativity/
'Why is normality the gold standard, when the "norm" hasn't worked for a while? Isn’t it time for new models of leadership, and new role models? Isn't it more exciting to be non-standard, to be covered in glitter, and to embrace a phenomenal spectrum of colours and possibilities?' This is an interview with Jane Clark of Beshara Magazine, which discusses my art-psychiatry commission #MagicCarpet as the first artist in residence at the Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology; Neuroscience, the genesis of the 350-member global Neurodiversity In/and Creative Research Network, and the importance of looking out of classroom windows (+ the need for new classrooms). The Beshara Magazine, an independent, non-profit publication published by the Beshara Trust (a UK-based educational charity founded in 1971, with Beshara meaning 'good news' in Aramaic), 'provides a platform for intelligent and thought-provoking material embodying a unifying perspective.
Click the link above for interview with R22: WEB RADIO OF THE ARTS AND COMMONS. I was interviewed with artist, collaborator since RUN! RUN! RUN Biennale 2014, and Director of Fermynwoods Contemporary Art, on art and running, as well as the new Running Artists Network. The channel is concerned with social, political and cultural contexts and art.
Neurodiversity is a hidden issue -- and resource -- in Higher Education. >15% of the UK population and >30% art and design students are neurodivergent (with 'atypical' learning and communications modes, including dyslexia, autism, ADHD - as did Leonardo Da Vinci). It is Disability History Month and this article was published by Manchester Metropolitan University. As its 'Disabled Staff Role Model', I talked about being a neurodivergent academic, setting up an international Network for 210 other neurodivergent academics and allies, and how I spent 12 hours to write 160 words in a form. Comments from colleagues were positive.
The published article is an abridged version from a longer, original one. Writing this article was one of a few activities I participated in for Disability History Month 2020. On 2nd December, I was part of an online panel addressing 65 students on neurodiversity at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, and on 8th December, I will address art students at University Arts London - sign up is open to all (first come first served).
‘The arts sector thinks that we’re so liberal, we’re so open. We aren’t at all. We are as racist as any other sector. We have sophisticated ways of covering it up. I don’t want to resuscitate that. It remains the job of a lot of us to keep calling out on bad practices and faux liberalism’.
KAI ON WHAT WE SHOULDN’T RESUSCITATE POST-COVID
Artist-Provocateur Ashok Mistry has been interviewing artists and prominent figures in the sector as part of DNR_RND, a project he initiated to examine how the arts sector can change to be more equitable post-Covid, for Disability Arts Online.
About Ashokkumar Mistry: https://disabilityarts.online/blog/author/ashokkumar-d-mistry/
Read transcript of my opening provocation here https://www.a-n.co.uk/blogs/transcript-neurodivergent-leaders-in-the-cultural-and-academic-sectors/
Read transcript of my 2nd provocation here https://www.a-n.co.uk/blogs/transcript-neurodivergent-leaders-in-the-cultural-and-academic-sectors/
The event consisted of a film screening and discussion with myself, curator Alessandra Cianetti, and literary researcher Dr Sophie Jones (pictured, in a still from the film, with BSL interpreter Audrey Simmons). We explored the aesthetics of neurodiversity and the place of invisible disabilities in the cultural industries. It took place on 21 May 2019 at Birkbeck, University of London. The evening began with the provocation, followed by the premiere of a film, Brisk/Risks, which explores risk-taking within and beyond ADHD. This was followed by further responses and provocations by myself, Cianetti and Jones and a discussion. Associated with the event was a 5-day exhibition of my #MagicCarpet in Room 106, which was also artist Vanessa Bell’s studio. Bell also worked in tapestries, and was also the sister of Virginia Woolf, both of the Bloomsbury Set. The exhibition and event were part of Birkbeck Arts Week 2019. The podcast of the evening can be accessed here. This event is funded by a grant from the Birkbeck Wellcome Trust Institutional Strategic Support Fund. Read the transcripts of 2 of the presentations at Brisk/Risks here. If you are keen to be part of a network on neurodiversity with a focus on practice (including creative practice), interdisciplinarity and intersectionality, please contact me [email protected]
An innovative #MagicCarpet activity that took place at the South London Gallery as reviewed in Arts in Mind in The Psychologist (The British Psychological Society), 31, pp.68–69, as reviewed by an attendee Sushank Chibber, in an article by Dr Sally Marlow, Public Engagement Fellow at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN), King's College London. Read online https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-31/august-2018/arts-mind
ARTS IN MIND
Arts in Mind was a week-long festival (June 4-10, 2018) celebrating innovative collaborations between researchers at the IoPPN, and the creative and cultural sector. It showcased work that explores new ways to improve wellbeing and facilitate a better understanding of mental health, the brain and the mind. The creative producer was Ruth Garde, who previously worked at the Wellcome Trust for 16 years.
#MAGICCARPET in ARTS IN MIND
Kai's 1.5 year Arts Council England funded Unlimited commission, #MagicCarpet, took part in the Arts in Mind Festival in 4 ways:
- 3-week long exhibition of the tapestry art (2.9mX1.45m) on bespoke 'invisible loom' designed by the women-run Studio LW Furniture, at the IoPPN.
- 'Speed-dating' South London Gallery. Members of the public 'speed-dated' experts in the arts and mind: Professor of Psychiatry and adult ADHD expert Philip Asherson (Social, Genetic and developmental Psychiatry Centre SGDP); arts: Dr Cecilia Wee (Artsadmin); live art: Dr Daniel Oliver (Queen Mary University of London), ADHD: Consultant Dr Ulrich Müller and UKAAN Committee Member Jane Sedgwick, and visual art: Dr Kai Syng Tan (SGDP). We were joined by young people aged 14-21, as the evening is part of the SLG’s youth forum, the Art Assassins who are currently working on their year-long project The Peckham Experiment: A Centre for Self-organisation.
- A new short film made by #MagicCarpet’s Michael Larsson (Sweden), Philip Tan (Singapore) and Kai was also launched that evening.
- Badge-making workshop for 8 year-old school children from the local Lyndhurst Primary School.
COVERAGE
Apart from The Psychologist, #MagicCArpet's involvement in Arts in Mind was also covered on South London press. See Smith, H., 2018. Arts In Mind Festival – I don’t mind if you don’t mind, do you mind..? – South London News. South London Press and Mercury. [online] 4 Jun. Available at: <https://www.londonnewsonline.co.uk/arts-in-mind-festival-i-dont-mind-if-you-dont-mind-do-you-mind/>. Kai was also interviewed on Resonance FM. See Clear Spot: Arts In Mind, 2018. Mixcloud. 4 Jun. Available at: <https://www.mixcloud.com/Resonance/clear-spot-4th-june-2018-arts-in-mind-final-edit/?play=fb> and Four Communications, 2018. Arts in Mind. Available at: <https://fourcommunications.com/arts-in-mind/>
FEEDBACK
Feedback included: 'Many thanks for taking part in our festival. Your carpet is magic.' 'Thank you so much for the great workshop yesterday. Kai was so charismatic and engaging, the children loved her. Don't forget us next year!', 'So good to have had intergenerational conversations. Informative + surprising. It was a mind opening experience', 'Beautiful experience', 'Share a mailing list of all the attendees that were present / large crowd / meeting people', 'Very fun & engaging! Talking with strangers is nice:)', 'Helped me talk to others, I am normally an introvert who watches'.
Professor Philip Asherson has this to say about the South London Gallery event: 'It was great talking to the young people. They really treasured their art. I met a young man doing photography GCSE - street pics of Peckham. He seemed really ambitious and working hard. It was great fun to talk to him’.
Sushank Chibber has this to say: 'Your event was so innovative and really brought art and science together, two disciplines that are so far-fetched from each other. I learned more about the mind, ADHD and how important art is in navigating various outlets and that was more valuable to me in terms of what I would have learned in a classroom setting. The connection between art and science is so essential, and you were able to impact and educate individuals so effectively and bring awareness at the same time. Your event was exceptional as it encouraged everyone to step outside of their comfort zone and try to understand their own inhibitions in terms of ADHD and of other people as well. [...] your event was able to break [...] barriers and provide a ‘family’ as well as imparting useful skills in return. Art in that case served as a process to educate me and to connect me with people that are just like me, something that I am extremely grateful to you for. Thank you and I look forward to your next event.'
MORE
For more images and information: http://wesatonamat.weebly.com/2018-june-arts-in-mind.html
Louise Arseneault is the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Mental Health Leadership Fellow. She is also Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and Professor of Developmental Psychology at the Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre of the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience (IoPPN), King's College London. During her ESRC fellowship, Louise plays a vital role in championing the role of social science in mental health research. Louise works closely with the Government, Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise sector and academics to best address the challenges that mental health poses for our society, communities and individuals. Throughout the three year fellowship, Professor Arseneault is playing a vital role in championing mental health research. Louise provides intellectual leadership and strategic advice and is working to promote investment in the mental health field as part of her fellowship. Louise is also investigating the impact of social relationships, in a contemporary Britain on mental health and wellbeing. The project specifically focuses on issues shaped by new technologies and social media including cyber harassment and bullying as well as social isolation and loneliness across
In collaboration with Dr Kai Syng Tan (UCL Institute of Advanced Studies), Professor Stahl organised numerous events in the gallery including tours of the exhibition and discussions engaging the public, students and artists. The project received additional funding from the Royal Thai Embassy and was opened by his Excellency the Thai ambassador.
Read related essay here
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/slade/monologue/monologue-final-2-small.pdf
On 5th December 2017, set against the backdrop of the recent Westminster Hall debate and cross-council focus spotlight on mental health amidst a disordered world that is in motion and commotion, and through her commissioned project that investigates the boundaries between ‘order’ and ‘disorder’ (in the psychiatric, artistic, geopolitical and metaphorical senses of the terms), artist Dr Kai Syng Tan sketched out the potential role of the artist-researcher as a connector-disrupter-running messenger generating spaces of ‘productive antagonisms’ in the discussion of the role of the arts in mainstream discourse on wellbeing and health.
Chair: Professor Megan Vaughan (UCL Institute of Advanced Studies Deputy Director)
Respondents: Dr Vivienne Lo (Senior Lecturer, Department of History and Convenor, UCL China Centre for Health and Humanity) and Dr Mohammed Aboulleil Rashed (Wellcome ISSF Fellow, Birkbeck College, University of London)
Filmed by: Albert Brenchat Aguilar
Title: The ill-disciplined visual artist-researcher as connector, disruptor and running messenger in visual art and mental health approaches? Towards a conceptual framework drawing on ADHD to engineer ‘productive antagonisms’
For more details: eventbrite.co.uk/e/ias-talking-points-orderdisorder-the-artist-researcher-as-connector-disrupter-running-messenger-tickets-39722975489#
Presenters: Shahidha Bari, Laurence Scott
Guests: Vybarr Cregan-Reid - author of Footnotes How Running Makes Us Human, Angus Farquhar, Creative Director of NVA Public Art, author of a blog 'The Grim Runner’, Hayden Lorimer Running Geographer, Kai Syng Tan, Artist and curator of a biennial festival Run Run Run
Producer: Jacqueline Smith.
The ASEAN Para Games (APG, with ‘ASEAN referring to the Association of South East Asian Nations) — welcomed 3000 athletes and officials from 10 nations. Commissioned by Sport Singapore and directed by Philip Tan, the multimillion-dollar, multi-media Ceremonies, entitled Celebrate the Extraordinary, was attended by Heads of States, broadcasted to 600 million in the region and live-streamed to many more. Created with and for people of all abilities, the Ceremonies were a resounding success. The Games were said to have set a new precedent not just for Para Games in the South East Asian region, but with broader implications for inclusivity. Firsts include the Opening Ceremony being beamed live to Singapore, the Philippines and Thailand, as well as being accompanied by live interpretation and live captioning. Two years in the making, the Ceremonies generated a range of outputs, such as commissioned films and programme booklets (which included Braille versions).
* To find out more about the Opening and Closing Ceremonies which were directed by Philip Tan, visit http://kaisyngtan.com/portfolio/2015-para-games/
* To see Philip’s works: philbeat.com
The original interview can be seen here http://www.uobpoy.com/alumni/
Helen R Cobby, currently Research Curator at Leamington Spa art gallery, and an museum & independent art critic, was the interviewer. Follow Helen here:
helencobby.wordpress.com
https://twitter.com/helencobby
The Prezi for the performance-lecture that Kai gave on 26 February 2014 can be found here.
https://prezi.com/e200i9f8rlgk/ucl-art-museum-gig-26-feb-2014-how-to-stop-worrying-and-love-running/
The Curator who invited Kai to give this talk was Dr Martine Rouleau.
The original interview can be found on the UCL Art Museum blog: http://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/museums/2014/02/06/how-to-stop-worrying-and-love-running/
For a sense of the physicality of the publication, click on the following links:
https://www.behance.net/gallery/32959313/Singapores-Visual-Artists
http://sagg.info/singapores-visual-artists-publication/
This work was undertaken at the Slade School of Fine Art. It was funded by UCL (the Overseas Research Scholarship and the Graduate Research Scholarship) as well as National Arts Council of Singapore. The written work (70,000 words, 6 chapters) complemented my studio practice, which comprised of a large body of art works that ran the gamut of genres and medium including durational performance, film, performance-lecture, photography, GPS drawing, (social media) art and so on. My Supervisors were Professor Susan Collins (Director of Slade School of Fine Art), Dr Sharon Morris (Deputy Director and Head of Doctoral Research), as well as Mr Jon Thomson (Slade Reader; of Thomson & Craighead). Over the years 2009-2013, I had shown/performed/talked about different versions of this work in 63 exhibitions/publications/presentations.
Gudrun Filipska: http://www.gudrunfilipska.com/
7 hours of Running Artfully: Running Artfully Network launch: http://fermynwoods.org/running-artfully-network-launch-event/
RAN contexts: https://kaisyngtan.com/artful/ran-launch/
This article is authored not by myself but the marvellously-named artist-researcher Gudrun Filipska. This is her beautiful essay (April 2021) to reflect on the Running Artfully Network launch that took place in February 2021. It is a full-bodied, full-minded, multi-layered read. There are insights and new questions re the creative and critical. possibilities of running in today’s complex world.
Gudrun Filipska is an artist, writer, researcher and founding and steering member of the collective (Arts) Territory Exchange. Her work considers the cultural and literary associations of journeying often aiming to re-configure these narratives to include, feminist and ‘other’ itinerant practices and offering counter positions to colonial and male-centric travel and mobility cultures. She is interested in the intersections between distance and proximity and the manifestations of co-presence which take place across these fields. She is currently undertaking a PhD under the ‘Transnationalism, Mobilities and Borders’ scholarship at Lancaster University.
The Running Artfully network (RAN) is a new international artist-led collective which brings artists, runners and social science and health experts together to reframe running as an artistic intervention to unpick our time of multiple global crisis and create a more equitable creative future.
This online launch event featured contributions from:
Fio Adamson, Véronique Chance, Beth Clayton, Kathryn Cooper, Lynn Denisson, Andrew Filmer, Gongle, Kathryn Lawson Hughes, Taey Iohe, Manjeet Mann, Victoria Ohuruogu, Natalie Pace, David Sidley, Dan Simpson, James Steventon, Matti Tainio, Kai Syng Tan, Nik Wakefield, Sharon Wilson and Chris Wright.
Curatorial Panel and RAN founding members:
Kai Syng Tan (#r3fest founder and Running Cultures Research Group lead)
James Steventon (Director, Fermynwoods Contemporary Art)
Veronique Chance (Senior Lecturer, Anglia Ruskin University)
Lisa Stansbie (Fields of Vision and Axisweb lead)
Matti Tainio (University of Turku, Pori University Consortium, Finland)
Elisa Herera Altamirano (Capicúa Mov Lab lead, Mexico/Spain)
Beth Clayton (UK)
The artists and researchers involved in this publication and associated symposium, the Art & Mobilities Network Inaugural Symposium held 3 July 2018 at the Peter Scott Gallery, Lancaster University are: Kaya Barry, Tess Baxter, Bruce Bennett, Clare Booker, Natalie Bowers, Monika Büscher, Owen Chapman, Jocelyn Cunningham, Malé Lujan Escalante, Nick Ferguson, Bernard Guelton, Peter Merrington, Elia Ntaousani, Kat Jungnickel, Linda O Keeffe, Sven Kesselring, Carlos Lopez, Serena Pollastri, Nikki Pugh, Emma Rose, Kim Sawchuk, Mimi Sheller, Richard Smith, Jen Southern, Bron Szerszynski, Kai Syng Tan, Sam Thulin, Emma Whittaker and Louise Ann Wilson
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CONTEXTS
Kai was a 2017-2018 Centre for Mobilities Research CEMORE Visiting Fellow, Lancaster University. She worked closely with the Director of Mobilities Lab Dr Jen Southern, as well as Professor Emma Rose and Dr Linda O Keefe of the Lancaster Institute of Contemporary Arts, and successfully co-curated the Art & Mobilities Network Inaugural Symposium. The study and practice of Art & Mobilities has been gaining momentum in the past decade. This includes pioneering solo and collaborative work led by Jen, a key player in the field. The Art & Mobilities network consolidates, celebrates and develops this work. On 3rd July, nearly thirty artists, writers, curators and researchers gathered - physically and via Skype - at the Peter Scott Gallery. UK participants brought with them objects, images or texts for a pop-up exhibition. We wrote our big ideas on a ‘manifesto wall’ and considered the histories of mobilities in art practice through a timeline running across the Gallery. Jen gave a keynote packed full of information and provocations covering creative research methods, the aesthetics of mobility and so on. We closed the colloquium with a role and ‘next step’ that each of us intends to perform to get the group going. In the longer term, we will seek funding to build this network internationally and to facilitate collaborations and activities such as conferences, exhibitions and publications.
Kai helped to collate and design an ‘instant journal’, an experimental platform which documents some of our activities and thoughts, and which we will continue to edit and develop. You can see the full publication in the link above.
Kai also gave a keynote lecture which was a performance-lecture of how art and mobilities collide for her as an artist, curator and woman. See a version of it here in the form of an online story through 100 slides. https://bit.ly/2Ob34Ha
OTHER LINKS
See next steps here: http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/cemore/mobilities-lab/art/
Flickr album: https://bit.ly/2vdIkri
Twitter discussion: https://twitter.com/hashtag/artmobs?src=hash
Timeline: https://bit.ly/2vhQSgB
Graphic design: Maria Portugal
Kai Syng Tan: Yes, I set up RUN! RUN! RUN! to, well, run solo and collaborative work – and the activities will jolt you from your nightmare — because what we do is not so much about running as a ‘sport’ or exercise, but how its physical and poetic processes can be mobilised as metaphor, methodology and material to enable us to reimagine ourselves and the world around us.
For instance, in the workshop at Documenta, participants ran for all of two minutes, to think and talk about how running affects what and how they think and talk. The commission in Finland was a series of running ‘masterclasses’ conducted by world-class running experts – ages seven to 14 – to teach adults (top age: 84) how to re-cultivate fun and silliness, to give them the permission to trip over, to throw tantrums and to giggle.
I picked up running in 2009 because it can be fun and silly (in theory at least, although it is not always the case in real life for a middle-aged beginner). After all, as toddlers, soon as we could walk, we ran — until our parents and teachers reprimanded us. The same way an artist may use bronze, acrylic or data, I mobilise running. Running, and previously, swimming, hula hopping and so on, because it is of and by the body. Running, because it is about putting one foot after the other, without the need for equipment or even shoes. Running, because intellectuals have insisted on mocking it as a ‘futile’ (Baudrillard) ‘New Age myth’ (Zizek), and preferred walking as the ‘sensitive, spiritual act’ that has built ‘Western civilisation’ (French philosopher Alain Finkielkraut) — ignoring the fact that artists do use running (in a ‘sensitive’ and ‘spiritual’ way), such as artist Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba and his Breathing is Free: 12,756.3, an ongoing performance since 2007, in an attempt to physically experience world refugee crisis by running the diameter of the earth, 12,756.3km. Running — instead of flying, like Icarus — because it is mundane and everyday. You do not have to ‘go for a run’, you can run after a bus (or not). And way before it became popular for people to ‘go for a run’ (and there are many — more than 2 million people a week in England — who do so today), our ancestors had had to run when hunting for food, two million years ago. So biologically and neurologically, human beings are ‘tailor made’ to run. Aside from our enormous buttocks (maximus gluteus) and that have no use whatsoever for walking, human beings have cultivated cognitive skills such as ‘the retention and recall of the details (topography, potential food sources, water sources, etc) of large areas of land’, and a ‘long-range vision’ or ability to project and extrapolate, from having to chase for 6, 7 hours after an antelope in the African planes. Running — rather than ‘jogging’ — because if you cannot physically run, you can metaphorically do so. The word ‘run’ has no less than eighty-one definitions and expressions in the Oxford English Dictionary. So its poetic potential is endless, including expressions like ‘letting your imagination run riot’, being on the run’, ‘running into’, and ‘running against’.
The expressions ‘running into’ and ‘running against’ are at the heart of ‘productive antagonisms’, a conceptual framework which collaborator geographer Dr Alan Latham and I have come up with. At its most basic, this refers to the facilitation of a kind of potential space, a between space where the usual norms of disciplinary practice are temporarily suspended. At a broader level, it is about a mode of working with and through difference. The workshop in Finland for instance was about exploring the creative sparks that could emerge from collisions and frictions of dissimilar people and elements: of generation (adults, teenagers, children); of disciplinary backgrounds (Alan is a geographer, I am an artist); of cultures (Finland, Singapore — where I am from originally, New Zealand — where Alan yields, and UK — our adopted home). If it was competitive, it was a competition against time — to come up with a ‘work’ after just 4 hours of workshopping with the children. And with my kind of timing for the 10 races I have competed, I think it is illegal for me to talk about competitiveness and running in the same sentence. (For the record, it was 4 hours 24 minutes for the 2011 London Marathon and 1 hour 53 minutes 01 seconds for the 2012 KNI Walthamstow Forest Half Marathon. Go on, mock me),
That said, the sportiness and competitiveness of running can be interesting, too. In a digital work that I created in 2015, instead of neutralising the competitive nature of running, I played it up. By drawing a satirical parallel between the gruelling (and exorbitant) journeys that migrants undertake to seek asylum in Europe, with the gruelling (and exorbitant) endurance races that niche but expanding groups of people from the ‘first world’ subject themselves to in the name of fitness, adventure or self-fulfillment, Certainly the Toughest UltraMarathon of Your Life is a map of Europe that critiques the demonisation of migrants by mainstream media and Nimbies (‘not in my backyard’, people who oppose to something that happens in their immediate surroundings, such as a ‘swarm’ of immigrants).
[...]
performingborders is a platform that explores the relations between the notion of border and live art. The ‘performingborders. conversation on live art | crossing | europe' project is disseminated as an interview-based research-blog and series of related events and writing commissions which interrogate the practices of performers that are responding to the challenging notion of contemporary borders and the shifting concept of Europe.
From February 2016, each month the blog publishes an interview with a live artist, academic, thinker or art professional, as a way to explore the debate on what the contemporary meaning of ‘border’ in live art is, how live artists are addressing this issue within Europe, and how the curatorial tool of the interview can be challenged. The multi-media interviews take a discursive and conversational approach in order to delve into the boundaries of the ever-developing notion of Europe and its proliferating and increasingly heterogeneous borders.
https://performingborders.live
Answer: They are change-makers who are neurodivergent or, in Tik Tok parlance, ‘neurospicy’.
In the last few years, there’s been an explosion in the interest, awareness and diagnosis of ADHD, autism and other ‘atypical’ forms of cognitive processes, – but beyond the fads, myths and tech-bro cartoon-tycoons, what are the scientific facts – and creative potential – of neurodiversity?
Drawing on the big-picture thinking and risk-taking approaches of neurodivergence, my new book Neuro-Futurism and Re-Imagining Leadership: An A-Z towards Collective Liberation (Palgrave Macmillan 2024) discusses creative ways to think about and make changes to the troubled moment we live in.
Written in my trademark ‘ecelctic and cheeky’ style (Sydney Morning Herald) and punctuated with 39 full-colour images, the book introduces ‘neuro-futurism’ as a (co-)creative, diversified, decolonised, neuro-queered practice of change-making and future-making.
Endorsement includes:
‘Astonishing, daring, pioneering, and much, much needed. At once inspirational, creative, subversive, and at times hilarious, Tan provides multiple strategies to disrupt and reclaim ideas and spaces about leadership’.
– Philosopher-Psychiatrist Dr Mohammed Abouelleil Rashed, UK.
'Tan artfully brings together seemingly disparate phenomena in a clever and compelling maneuver, urging the reader to consider their own assumptions and prejudices, while encouraging a re-learning and call-to-action for creative, innovative, and (neuro)divergent practices for change. The book is meant to disrupt and energize – asking for change and urging us to question assumptions and poor habits we find ourselves easily dismissing under excuses of institutional frameworks. It questions academic agency and integrity, urging to confront difference and diversity, and using the artistic and creative as one mechanism to push for better leadership in this space. This is bold and inspiring – and I cannot wait to use this as an exemplar in my own methods and teaching'.
-- Artist-Geographer Dr Kaya Barry