November 23rd, 2010
After a successful screening at VideodanzaBA International Festival of Video Dance in Buenos Aires in September, Anna Macdonald’s latest film, Things that start slowly, has been selected to compete in the VideoDansa Barcelona International Prize. This is an international competition designed to recognize those most relevant works of the audiovisual creation with the body, movement and choreographic language as significant elements of the content and form of the film. As a part of this competition it will be screened in the Image Dance and new media festival in Barcelona in January 13th – 16th 2011.
Things that start slowly
It has also been selected for International Dance Film Festival, Belgium DANSCAMDANSE which is a prestigious festival introduced this year by the choreographer Wim Vandekeybus.
Things that start slowly was one of only two works selected from the UK.
Things that start slowly is a film triptych consists of images of ships, a baby, and two women first in early pregnancy and then later at nine months. The women move continuously, carefully re-positioning themselves in relation to the screen and each other. One of them is heard talking quietly, amidst sounds of water and wind, about trying to predict outcomes and possibilities. Running through the work is a pervading sense of loss; a restless tension between things that remain, and things that disappear over time.
Anna works in a company called Forecast who have been based in the North West since 2002. Their work spans dance, live art, film and installations and they have collaborated with artists such as Paul Hampson, Heidi Rustgaarde and Andrea Buckley. As well as receiving international recognition for their film based work Forecast have won commissions for their installations and their live work has been regularly supported by the Arts Council. They have recently been invited to be part of Raw, Roar, Rare an International Performance festival in Liverpool 2010.
November 5th, 2010
The Institute for Performance Research
One PhD Studentship (full-time) and Two PhD Studentships (part-time) available
Application deadline: Friday 28th January 2011
Further information about the Studentships are available here: http://www.ipr.mmu.ac.uk/jobsstudentships/
September 8th, 2010
The Department of Contemporary Arts, in collaboration with the University of Central Lancashire, has been successful in receiving external funding from the AHRC Collaborative Research Training – public engagement bid (£10,000). This is a very exciting opportunity for early-career researchers and PhD students within the Department of Contemporary Arts. The project will equip participants with the skills to successfully and effectively deliver public engagement projects, through the provision of a training programme delivered in parallel with the development of a live public engagement project. During the development stage of the project participants will engage with diverse audiences from across the North West region, produce an exhibition and communicate the live project findings to the public, and this event will tour across the region (there is also potential for the work to inform a more developed research paper for publication). The project will culminate in May 2012 with a ‘live’ project in the new Cheshire Contemporary Arts building. The project team from the Department of Contemporary Arts include: Dr Martin Blain, Ms Carola Boehm, Ms, Jane Linden and Dr Kim Wiltshire. If you would like to know more about the project please contact Dr Martin Blain (Project co-ordinator for MMUC).
January 28th, 2010
The Institute for Performance Research (IPR) are excited to launch the new website and microsites.
The new site provides information about our research for sport and the contemporary arts. Our two research centres (Research in Sport, Exercise and Physical Activity (SEPA) and Performance and Screen Media (PSM)) have their own groups microsites, please visit our IPR groups section for further details.
We hope you will enjoy the site.
October 1st, 2009
Staff Research Seminars are given by research-funded staff and are open to all staff and students as a part of the Curating Knowledge Research Forum.
The Seminars are set up to provide a discursive forum for research in the Department and to give visibility for staff and students to the wide range of research that is being undertaken within the subject areas at both staff and post-graduate levels.
Series 1: October – December
October 29th    Dr. Ric Allsopp
‘Still Moving: 21st Century Poetics’
November 5th   Prof. Allen Fisher
‘The Complexity Manifold Part 2 Â - a poetics of practice’
November 19th    Dr. Anna Birch
‘The Performance Toolkit’
December 3rd     Dr. Martin Blair & Dr. Adam Fairhall
Titles to follow
December 17th    Carola Boehm
‘Interdisciplinarity, the challenge for Higher Education or: Music Technology – the discipline that never was’
November 24th, 2008
Curating Knowledge is an initiative set up by Contemporary Arts staff and curated by Jane Linden which invites practitioner/ researchers to exhibit/ install work in the campus Gallery (Alsager Arts Centre Gallery ), and share ideas about its relationship with research and the wider context. The exhibitions show work in the area of visual/ live/ new media as well as cross-disciplinary or performative work in a studio/ gallery context. The work is documented and archived.
The Curating Knowledge Research Forum will run from 24 November 2008 – 1 May 2009.