SEAM Symposium 2009 Biographies

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image credit: Tuning Fork, Suzon Fuks

BIOGRAPHIES
Keynote Session Biographies
Artist Talk Biographies
Invited Speaker Biographies
Symposium Conveners Biographies

KEYNOTE SESSION BIOGRAPHIES

Dr Andrew Benjamin, Victoria, Australia
Professor of Critical Theory and Philosophical Aesthetics, Monash University, Adjunct Professor of Design, Architecture, Building, UTS, MA, BA (ANU), DEA (Paris) PhD (Warwick).

Andrew is internationally recognized as a philosopher, architectural theorist and authority on contemporary French and German critical theory. He is currently the Professor of Critical Theory and Philosophical Aesthetics in the Centre for Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies at Monash University as well as Professor of Critical Theory in Architecture and Design at the University of Technology, Sydney. He was previously Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Centre for Research in Philosophy and Literature at Warwick University. An internationally recognised authority on contemporary French and German critical theory, he has been Visiting Professor at Columbia University in New York and Visiting Critic at the Architectural Association in London. His many books include: What is Deconstruction? (1988), Art, Mimesis and the Avant-Garde (1991), Present Hope: Philosophy, Architecture, Judaism (1997), Philosophy's Literature (2001) and Disclosing Spaces: On Painting (2004). He also edited The Lyotard Reader(1989), Abjection, Melancholia and Love: the Work of Julia Kristeva(1990) and Walter Benjamin's Philosophy: Destruction and Experience (1993) and Walter Benjamin and Romanticism (2002).

Dr Pia Ednie-Brown, Victoria, Australia
Senior Lecturer in the Architecture, RMIT University, Melbourne.

Pia is a writer, designer and educator based in Melbourne, Australia. She works at RMIT University where she is a Senior Lecturer in the Architecture program and a research leader in the Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory (SIAL). Her diverse, transdisciplinary activities are encompassed under the practice name 'onomatopoeia'. Her research, which has been published and exhibited internationally, employs writing, designing and teaching to explore processes of change at work in the present moment (or the 'contemporary'), and to both understand and generate connections between architectural endeavour and other diverse, apparently disconnected phenomena. Her approach generally involves a form of micro-analysis, in which the apparently insignificant acts and gestures of bodies and things can become relevant to creative composition. A recently published book, Plastic Green; designing for environmental transformation, offers an account of one of her cross-disciplinary, collaborative projects with other researchers and students at RMIT.

Dr Erin Manning, Canada
Assistant Professor, Concordia University, Montreal, Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema, Cross- Appointed with Studio Arts.

Erin is assistant professor in studio art and film studies at Concordia University (Montréal, Canada) as well as director of The Sense Lab, an interdisciplinary environment that explores the active relation between the philosophical, artistic and political sensing body in movement. Her artwork is primarily devoted to painting and sculpture. She dances Argentine Tango professionally. Her dance background includes classical ballet and contemporary dance. Publications include Politics of Touch: Sense, Movement, Sovereignty (Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 2006) and Ephemeral Territories: Representing Nation, Home and Identity in Canada (Minnesota University Press, 2003). 'In the middle of the second tango waltz, I feel our bodies begin to take over the movement. We forget to hold on to our “individuality” and slowly begin to individuate together. The relation begins to take form.

My body can no longer as easily be distinguished from hers. A symbiosis of movement begins to create engendering we cannot yet predict. This makes us smile. The music takes us into unpredictable directions. I lead, she follows, I follow her following, she leads my following. A composition is emerging. Qualitatively, we are altering each other’s matter-form, in-forming our bodies through the relation between movement and music. We operate according to the codes of tango but our improvisation takes us into compositions that modulate our reciprocal spacing of time and timing of space. [From Politics of Touch: Sense, Movement, and Sovereignty. Erin Manning, Minneapolis, Minnesota UP, 2007]

Dr Brian Massumi, Canada
Professor, Communication, Universite de Montreal.

Brian is an internationally acclaimed philosopher and social critic. He teaches in the Communication Department of the Université de Montréal. His work focuses on the philosophies of communication, electronic art, computer-aided design, architecture and the virtual have become seminal texts across a range of disciplines.

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ARTIST TALK BIOGRAPHIES

Dr Benedict Anderson, UK/Australia
University of Hertfordshire, UK

Benedict is an Australian born interdisciplinary practitioner working in architecture, film, & dance/performance dramaturgy. He has designed for ballet, opera and contemporary dance and has collaborated on numerous dramaturgy /performance projects with RIPE and Good Work Productions. Project and exhibitions include: En Residencia, Laboral Gijon Spain, Mobility Visions Theater der Welt Halle Germany, ARCO Madrid Spain, Millennium Centre Cardiff, Foundation Cartier Paris and Festival of the Arts Amman, Jordan. Screening of his documentary and experimental films include: Panorama Film Festival, Athens, Espace Media, Centre de Recontre International Monaco and the Normandy Contemporary Film Festival. He has won prizes for his academic and design work and acquisitions
include the Australian Centre for the Moving Image.

His writings and film works are engaged with architectural representation and reconstruction in contemporary Germany and the theme of his Ph.D. titled: The Architectural Flaw issues the problems facing the reconstruction of built environments. He has taught in architecture and design since 1994 and held a diversity of positions at various universities including: Gäst Professor - Institute for Raumgestaltung (Spatial Design) University of Innsbruck, Austria, Gäst Doctor and Dozent, TU/Berlin, RMIT University, Melbourne and as Advisor to the Bauhaus Post Graduate Program Dessau. Currently he is Visiting Professor and Course Director of Spatial Design, University of Hertfordshire, London, United Kingdom. He is partner in the Berlin based architecture firm Thinkbuild Architecture and is currently engaged on projects in Sweden and Berlin.

Dr Carol Brown, New Zealand/UK
University of Auckland, Auckland

Carol is an award-winning choreographer of contemporary dance, a writer, teacher and Artistic Director of Carol Brown Dances. Her work is research-led and collaborative; it evolves through intense dialogue and experimentation, in particular with artists and scholars from architecture, music, visual arts and literature. A New Zealander, Carol began her dance training with former Bodenwieser dancer, Shona Dunlop MacTavish in Dunedin and continued her training in New York and London after completing a history honours degree. She has an MA(dist) and a PhD in Dance from the University of Surrey, England. The latter, completed in 1995, was one of the first practice-based PhDs in the UK. In 1997 Carol was made Associate Artist and in 1999 the first woman Choreographer in Residence at the Place Theatre in London. Since this time, she has received numerous awards including, a Jerwood Award for Choreography, an AHRB Research Fellowship in the Creative and Performing Arts and a NESTA Dream Time. In 2003 Carol was awarded the Ludwig Forum International Prize for Innovation for The Changing Room.

Carol’s choreography opens questions through exploring relationships between spaces and bodies in diverse situations. A process-led focus upon how bodies move with given constraints, often spatially determined, generates a somatic language which is shaped, refined and contested through emergent choreographic scores. Her productions, through Carol Brown Dances have been presented throughout the world including at the Hermitage Theatre (St Petersburg); Bank Theatre (Philadelphia); Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (Australia); National Theatre (Rome); Te Papa Soundings Theatre (Wellington, New Zealand); Purcell Room (South Bank London); National Theatre of Bulgaria (Sofia); Centre National de la Danse (Paris); Birmingham Hippodrome; Ludwig Forum (Aachen); and the Place Theatre (London).

Together with frequent collaborator Dorita Hannah, (Touch Tower, Her Topia and Aarero Stone) Carol is currently developing large-scale place sensitive works, stimulating the civic life of the city with dancing.

Professor Dorita Hannah, New Zealand
Architect and Sceneographer
College of Design Fine Arts and Music, Massey University

Architecture and performance form the principle threads that weave through Dorita Hannah’s creative work, teaching and research. Her practice includes scenographic, interior, exhibition and installation design with a specialized architectural consultancy in buildings for the visual & performing arts as well as international performance design projects. She has published on practices that negotiate between art, architecture and performance. In 2007 she was a member of the international jury for the Prague Quadrennial and in 2006 convened an International Symposium on Performance Design in Rome that brought together interdisciplinary artists, performers, architects and theorists, resulting in the publication of an anthology. Hannah also recently co-edited a themed issue on architecture/Performance for JAE.

She has practiced as a designer in New Zealand, Australia, London, Czech Republic, Greece and New York, gaining awards and citations for her creative work, including a UNESCO Laureate in 1999. Hannah is currently vice-Chair for OISTAT’s History/Theory Commission and is on the editorial board for a three-volume publication on World Stage Design.

Dr Lawrence Wallen, New South Wales, Australia
Head of the School of Design at the University of Technology Sydney

Australian artist and architect, Lawrence Wallen is professor for scenography at the Zurich University of the Arts and Head of the School of Design at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). His work is concentrated on the integration of narrative, transformative and interactive elements in performance architecture and art spaces. His projects are shown in museums, theatres and festivals internationally.

Recent projects include *repetitive systems (2009) for the Cairo Biennale, *past mapping* (2007) Public Art Project Korean Institute of Technology, *De los afectos* 2008 with Lanònima Imperial S.C.C.L. Barcelona Grec Festival Mercat de les Flors de Barcelona Festival Danza Gijón’08| Gijón, Teatro Central | Sevilla *Walking in the limits* (2006
- 07) (composer heinz reber) Premiere: Theaterspektakel Zürich, Festival La Bâtie Genf , Grand Théâtre Luxembourg , Volksbühne Berlin (März Musik).* Recent co-edited books include space and power, space and truth and the upcoming book space and desire that concludes the Zurich based publication/conference sequence.

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INVITED SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES

Dr Jondi Keane, Queensland, Australia
Griffith University

Jondi is an arts practitioner, critical thinker and senior lecturer at Griffith University. Over the last 25 years he has exhibited and performed in the USA, UK, Europe and Aus and published on embodiment, the philosophy of perception, experimental architecture and practice-led research in a range of interdisciplinary journals including Ecological Psychology, Janus Head, Interfaces, Text and a book chapter in the recent volume edited by E. Holland Gilles Deleuze: Image and Text (Continuum).

Peter King
Peter King's work as a director, performer, teacher and theoretician is well known in the boundaries he consistently crosses in his interdisciplinary practice. Through his company Going Through Stages Peter has produced a number a productions including Mahony Masques and Dazzle of Shadow. Most recently he was director in residence at NIDA where he produced the work Lots in Space.

Mårten Spångberg, Belguim/Sweden/Germany
Mårten Spångberg’s work starts from choreography but branches out into different forms of expression. He initiated the Panacea Festivals in Stockholm (1996 - 2001) and co-curated the Body Currency, Wiener Festwochen (1998), Read My Lips, Oslo (1997), the Fourth International Summer Academy, Frankfurt (2002), and CAPITALS Acarte, Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon, (2002-2003).

He is a frequent essayist and has worked as an opera and dance critic for daily newspapers, such as Aftonbladet (1991-93) and Dagens Nyheter (1993-97).

Mårten Spångberg is a founding member of Fame International and has performed a.o. with BDC and Tom Plischke, Xavier Le Roy, Bak-truppen, and Alice Chauchat. He did dramaturgical work for Ina C. Johannessen, I. Bjornsgaard, Angela Guerreiro, Dennis O’Connor, Lilia Mestre/Mette Edvardsen, and Christine de Smedt/Les Ballets C. de la B. His own performance projects are internationally presented: “Avantgarde” in 1999, “Recent Works” in 2000; in 2001 he choreographed “Break, Intermission, Before and After”, a commission for Ballett Frankfurt and “Plosion”; in 2002 “i.e. All All Over Over All All et.al.” and “Artists' talk”.

In 2005 Tanz in August presented a number of interventions focusing on how choreography and architecture interface in shaping human relations. He has created several installation works for a.o. Marres, Maastricht; Kunstverein Baden Baden, and Le Magasin, Grenoble.

Mårten Spångberg is Guest Professor at the University of Giessen, Germany; project coordinator at the Art Academy Maastricht and Senior Tutor at P.A.R.T.S. in Brussels.

Research
2008: Choreographers Venture:"Sweat - the Movie"
2007: Coaching Project: Who do you want to be: Artificial Sugar!
2006: Choreographers
2005: Coaching Project: Choreografie - Das Abenteuer

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SYMPOSIUM CONVENERS BIOGRAPHIES

Dr. Benedict Anderson, Australia/Berlin
Ph.D. 2006, M.A. 1999 (RMIT), Dip. 1989 (Ldn.)

Benedict Anderson is an Australian born interdisciplinary practitioner working in architecture, urban design, film, & dance/performance dramaturgy. He is collaborating with the highways agency UK in redeveloping on a series of subway infrastructure projects, and has designed for ballet, opera and contemporary dance and has collaborated on numerous dramaturgy /performance projects with RIPE and Good Work Productions. Projects and exhibitions include: En Residencia, Laboral Gijon Spain, ARCO Madrid Spain, Millennium Centre Cardiff, Foundation Cartier Paris and Festival of the Arts Amman, Jordan. His co-convened Mobility Visions conference and commissioned projects for Theater der Welt Halle Germany on the theme of architecture, public space and surveillance and presently SEAM conference Sydney on the themes of architecture, film and choreography. Screening of his documentary and experimental films include: Panorama Film Festival, Athens, Espace Media, Centre de Recontre International Monaco and the Normandy Contemporary Film Festival. He has won prizes for his academic and design work and acquisitions include the Australian Centre for the Moving Image.

His writings and film works are engaged with architectural representation and reconstruction in contemporary Germany and the theme of his Ph.D. titled: The Architectural Flaw issues the problems facing the reconstruction of built environments. He has taught in architecture and design since 1994 and held a diversity of positions at various universities including: Gäst Professor - Institute for Raumgestaltung (Spatial Design) University of Innsbruck, Austria, Gäst Doctor and Dozent TU/Berlin, RMIT University Melbourne, as Advisor to the Bauhaus Post Graduate Program Dessau and as Course Director of Interior and Spatial Design, University of Hertfordshire, London, United Kingdom. He is currently Visiting Professor to the University of Hertfordshire and is a partner in the Berlin based architecture firm Thinkbuild Architecture currently engaged on residential, institutional and urban design projects in Sweden, Berlin and London.

Margie Medlin, New South Wales, Australia
Margie Medlin (AUS/ GB) is an artist working in the field of dance and the moving image. For 20 years she has produced combinations of film and video works, scenographies and new media art works. As a producer and director of dance films and video works most recent credits include the film of SWIFT developed in collaboration with Warby for ABC television and Morphing Physiology a documentary of the Quartet Project. www.quartetproject.net. ‘Her recent installations have devised software and hardware tools that create a highly intelligent reflection on dance through the media of new technology.’ Ballet Tanz. Works include: Mobility in an Artificial City 1996, Elasticity and Volume 1998, Miss World 2000, Morphing Physiology 2007.

She has a BACHELOR OF ARTS in Film making and New Art Studies, Australia (1988), was a SPECIAL RESEARCH FELLOW lighting design at Yale School of Drama, U.S.A. (1989), she studied Scenography at Central Saint Martins School of Art and Design, London. (1991), ADVANCED COMPUTER APPLICATIONS FOR THEATRE DESIGN at Central School of Speech and Drama, London. (1992) and has a MASTER OF ARTS Interior design, Australia (1999). She was artist in Residence at the ZKM Institute for Art and Media, Germany (1999-2001), She received a Science and Art Production Award from the Wellcome Trust in London in 2005. Since 2007 Margie has been the Director of Critical Path, Choreographic Research Centre in Sydney Australia.

www.criticalpath.org.au

Dr Samantha Spurr, New South Wales, Australia
Lecturer, Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building, University of Technology, Sydney

Sam Spurr is a designer and theorist interested in the intersections between the performing arts and the novel environments coming out of digital design processes. She is currently a lecturer in Architecture at the University of Technology, Sydney. Sam has designed and managed a range of creative projects from commercial interiors to public art projects and set designs.

Sam Spurr studied Interior Architecture at the University of New South Wales, Sydney and became a founding Director of the design firm 4Site Architecture (1999). She was an international DAAD research fellow in the ‘Kulturen des Performativne’ research group at the Free University Berlin (2005). Sam was awarded her doctorate titled ‘Performative Architecture: Design Strategies for Living Bodies’ at UNSW (2007).

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