chaos-monde

SCA MA SYMPOSIUM
Thursday, December 5, 2024, 5:30 PM – 8:30 PM
Djavad Mowafaghian World Art Centre
149 W. Hastings ST., Vancouver

“The aesthetics of the universe assumed pre-established norms; the aesthetics of chaos-monde is the impassioned illustration and refutation of these.”

–Glissant, Poetics of Relation.

There is a trembling that, in its sudden and tenuous appearance, destabilizes our perceptions. It transcends the skin, the “fourth wall,” and the hard edges of received knowledge. Trembling thought slips through the breach—of history, convention, discipline—to insist on different arrangements of the possible. It provokes a return to the scene, a re-reading of the text; it troubles the edges of performance and offers a glimpse of photography’s errant note; it reveals the sacred in painting and amplifies new gestures of protest yet undone by the state. To tremble is always to tremble with: to ask, in common, what chaos-monde might rebuild.

The 2024 MA Symposium presents research by cohort members Rachel Silver Maddock, Joshua Segun-Lean, Sammy Kai Yee Chan, Michelle (Ziqi) Fu and Parastoo Fard. The evening will consist of 10-minute presentations by each scholar followed by a short Q&A session. We warmly invite you to come witness and revel in our research!

Schedule

• 5:30 PM: doors, food & music
• 6:00 PM: presentations
  
  • Rachel Silver Maddock: "Blurring the Body: Investigating Memory, Intensity & Haptic Space in Crystal Pite’s Assembly Hall and Kokoro’s LSD."
  • Sammy Kai Yee Chan: "Seeing through Opacity: Navigating Abstraction, Spirituality and Sublime Aesthetics in Environmental Crisis."
  • Ziqi (Michelle) Fu: "The Illusion of Autonomy: Agency, Adaptation, and Social Media Paradoxes of Sleep No More in Shanghai."
  • Parastoo Fard: "Gestures of Resistance: Performative Bodies of Women in the ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ Protests in Iran."
  • Joshua Segun-Lean: "In the Fissure: Antinomies of Form in the work on N.W. Thomas."
• 7:40 PM: mingle

Presenters

Rachel Silver Maddock

My paper investigates the elusive quality of performance that makes it stick in our memories. Through autoethnography and affective analysis, I take two dance shows as case studies: Crystal Pite’s Assembly Hall and Kokoro Dance’s Love, Sex and Death (LSD). Examining how live dance registers in the body as affect, I identify a connection between embodied memory and the performance sensorium—finding that the more intimate venue of LSD generated greater affective intensity. Recognizing the audience’s essential role, I argue for “haptic space:” a new descriptor for the productive multi-sensory blurring of bodies in live performance.

Biography

Rachel Silver Maddock is a dance artist and writer based on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. She sees the body as a site of investigation, tool of expression and mysterious archive. Her movement practice is nourished by the somatic techniques of many brilliant local artists, and she contributes regularly to arts publications.

Sammy Kai Yee Chan

My paper explores the intersection of abstract art, climate anxiety and spirituality, focusing on Japanese-American artist Makoto Fujimura’s Walking on Water series, inspired by the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011, and the broader climate crisis. Through an analysis of Fujimura’s abstract visuality and Judeo-Christian narratives, I highlight how slow art engagement can inspire deeper connections between humans and nature. Drawing on Édouard Glissant’s concept of opacity, the study reveals how Fujimura’s integration of New Testament themes fosters dialogue between the sacred and secular. Ultimately, this search advocates for a more ecocentric worldview, positioning abstract art as a transformative lens to navigate eco-distress and reframe human-environment relationships.

Biography

Sammy Kai Yee Chan (she/her) is a passionate art administrator with over 10 years of experience in organizing exhibitions, community art projects, and marketing for museums, art associations, and social enterprise from Hong Kong. Committed to social innovation, her research interests focus on the intersection of art and spirituality, social impact, and cultural entrepreneurship.

ZIQI (Michelle) Fu

Abstract: My essay discusses the immersive experimental theatre production Sleep No More (SNM) in NYC and Shanghai, adapted from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, focusing on its promise of audience autonomy. While extensive research highlights the audience's agency and individual experience within SNM, I argue that true autonomy, as envisioned by director Felix Barrett, is unattainable in its current iterations. Through field research, observations, and theoretical analysis, I examine how commercialization, cultural adaptations, and social media influence undermine the original intent. Furthermore, I explore how Shanghai’s version intensifies these contradictions, altering audience dynamics and paradoxically enabling reclaimed agency through social media engagement.

Biography

Michelle is a practitioner with broad interests in performing arts, focusing on the relationship between virtual and urban space performances. Her work explores how social media and online shows enhance accessibility, empowering individuals and communities. A nature lover, she enjoys traveling, journaling, and founded "uniheal_starry" for healing arts and cultural performances.

Parastoo Fard

In my essay, I examine the repeated gestures enacted by women during the “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests in Iran (2022–2023), where women, without scarves, stretched their bodies while standing on elevated urban objects with arms raised. I view these gestures as performatively linked to embodied practices from earlier protests and argue that they represent an embodied “scream.” This embodied scream responds to a state of dispossession in two ways: first, by empowering the compressed and traumatized body; and second, by reclaiming the dispossessed public space.

Biography

Parastoo Fard is an evolving researcher and artist with a background in theater and music, including acting, directing, and performing as a flutist. Currently focused on performance studies, her research explores embodiment and performances of resistance, aligning with her interest in interdisciplinary artworks that advocate for social and political transformation, and narrate stories of resistance.

Joshua Segun-Lean

My research considers the photographic archive of Northcote Whitridge Thomas, the first official ‘Government Anthropologist’ appointed by the British colonial government. Paying close attention to Thomas’s fieldwork on native populations in present-day Nigeria and Sierra Leone, I examine the disciplinary anxieties of 20th century ethnography, and how such anxieties conditioned ethnography's relationship to the photograph as both a source of evidence in itself and as a safeguard against the limits of evidence.

Biography

Joshua Segun-Lean is a writer.

Thank You

Thank you to all of our readers, the SCA faculty and staff, and our family and friends for supporting us through this research journey.