Enabling Entanglements to Emerge

From October 5 to 10, 2020, Performance Curators Initiative (PCI),1 a network of artists, curators, performance-makers, cultural workers, educators, practitioners, and enthusiasts based in the Philippines, held their third conference online via Zoom and streamed it on YouTube. Entitled “Conversations on Curation and Performance in the Time of Halting and Transformation,” I participated in this conference that opened a digital space for curators and performers around the world to talk about the effects of the global pandemic on the live arts. Connections, conversations, creative research, collaborations—as PCI founder and conference organizer Roselle Pineda notes—are the main focus of the network, which seeks to look at the relationship between “[p]erformance and curation, the role of curation in performance and role of performativity in curatorial practice” (from the network’s website). Pineda had invited me to register for the conference, which was focused on the role of curator as one who activates enabling spaces.

A Bibliometric Analysis of Fintech Trends and Digital Finance

Digital finance has piqued the curiosity of academics, students, and institutions all around the globe for more than a decade. Innovative financial services companies are offering a wide range of new financial products and new ways of interacting with customers via digital finance (Fintech). Research on finance and information systems has thus examined these shifts as well as the implications of technological advancements on the financial industry. Through presenting a bibliometric analysis, the article summarizes how scientific research has developed on the connections between financial technology developments and digital finance during the previous years. According to the ScienceDirect database, we base this literature review on journals and articles that have been published. We conducted a content analysis of 343 articles based on the discovered clusters, finding research gaps and suggesting actionable areas for further study. The results offer a solid path for future research in this area. We discuss the significance of the aforementioned publications and articles as well as potential areas of future study. The next step is to analyze the citation linkages between the most important articles to identify how they are related to one another. For financial technology research, the study looks at the way they are organized. The research is concerned with the roles of Fintech and the limits of research in digital financing. We point out potential routes for researchers to take to expand on current knowledge while also seeking possibilities for new, interesting, and creative research that adds to the expansion of the topic of research.

Introduction: Sustainability Science as Co-Creative Research Praxis

This chapter explores the relationship between collaboration and creativity within social sustainability research. Aimed at stimulating further reflection and debate on the role of ‘co-creativity’ in enabling transformative sustainability agendas, the chapter acts also as an introduction to the entire edited collection. A key guiding question posed from the outset is how co-creative research practice, as a generative process, can best support the emergence of alternative—potentially even transformative—ways of being in the world. The discussion proceeds with a conceptual review of creativity, followed by a detailed explanation of how co-creativity is defined for the purposes of this edited collection. The remainder of the chapter looks towards the nurturing of co-creative practice within social sustainability research; particular attention is given to socially inclusive forms of co-creative and engaged research praxis. The term co-creativity is used in reference to both individual methods and overarching research approaches that, through action and reflection, stimulate alternative understandings of why and how things are, and how they could be. Accordingly, emphasis is placed throughout this chapter on co-creative research practice as requiring a retained sensitivity to the importance of researching ‘with’.

Introduction: The Mississippi River Basin—a model for studying the Anthropocene in situ

Is it possible to trace ongoing transitions in the Earth system back to the regional scales at which they are produced and where their effects can be directly experienced? This editorial introduces two special issues of The Anthropocene Review that document a two-year, transdisciplinary experiment: a collaborative investigation of the Mississippi River Basin (MRB) as a model region for studying the Anthropocene condition in situ. Coordinated by the Anthropocene Curriculum, an initiative led by the Haus der Kulturen der Welt and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science,1 the project Mississippi: An Anthropocene River involved a large consortium of institutions and more than three hundred researchers, artists, activists, and local community members. Together, participants learned about, questioned, and experienced the Anthropocene at a level meaningful to people, a level at which historical legacies and future commitments play out amid concrete infrastructures and socio-ecological formations, and alongside existing inequalities and life’s everyday struggles. The introduction summarizes eleven scientific and creative research outputs that were selected from this wide-ranging experiment, contextualizes the river’s history, and explains the regional approach the project undertook.

Rethinking creative research methods in response to COVID-19: Creating a remote research kit

The ‘Sensing Spaces of Healthcare: Rethinking the NHS Hospital’ project involves working with National Health Service (NHS) staff, patients and visitors to explore their experiences of hospital environments. Over the course of the project, creative approaches centred on art-based and design-led practices are employed to research people’s experiences. Such approaches often involve working closely with participants during sessions. As COVID-19 infection control measures have affected in-person research, it has been necessary to develop and adopt alternative low-contact approaches. This article presents the development of a remote creative research kit designed to be used without a researcher/practitioner present. The kit has been developed through work with creative practitioners, hospital arts organizations, patient and public contributors and learning from public engagement events. The remote creative research kit has led to rethinking and reimagining the ways in which such approaches may be of benefit more broadly in healthcare settings.

Imagining Godzilla: An Art Research Network Platform

This chapter is an extended contribution from a collection of artists headed by Andy Best and Merja Puustinen. Best and Puustinen’s project, ‘Imagining Godzilla’, turned their Polynesian-style sailing catamaran into a research vessel on the Baltic Sea. With other artists on board, the catamaran became a mobile platform for creative-research projects on topics ranging from undersea Internet cables, new materialist explorations of phosphate circulation, audio-visual technologies and knowledge, and performative/auto-ethnographic accounts that probe the boundaries of life on land and sea.

Kanohi ki te kanohi - Face to face: frameworks from tikanga Māori meet viewpoints improvisations, shocking the theatrical encounter into alive-li-ness

<p>How can we make theatre that sizzles with life that is kinaesthetically and viscerally experienced? As artists in the theatre our work is to combat the falling back into the habitual. We need to wake ourselves up, to see anew, to respond out of the moment: not out of memory (reaching into the past) nor out of desire (reaching into the future), both of which produce what Peter Brook has famously described as ‘deadly’ theatre. How can we consistently produce work that combats these ‘deadly’ tendencies? Further, can we create work that is simultaneously artistically structured or fixed, created within the moment so that artistry and improvisation combine? This thesis investigates structures derived from the rituals of the New Zealand Māori, combined with choreography arising out of Viewpoints improvisations, testing them out in the context of actor training, predominantly at Toi Whakaari: New Zealand Drama School. Together they provide a framework for theatrical work that anchors actors to the present moment. They refocus performers’ attention towards purpose rather than performance. They allow the artistically structured to coexist with the improvisationally free, engendering a sense of pulsing life, a quality I am calling 'alive-li-ness'. They re-frame the audience-performer relationship, drawing the audience from observation towards a more participatory stance, where the performance becomes a journey undertaken together. This is a creative research thesis in which my own performative research underlies the critical and theoretical examination through a series of productions. Through them I am able to test out this thesis both in performance and on the rehearsal floor, forming the spine of the thesis. I begin with examining theatrical improvisation, the form in which the future is genuinely unknown, the qualities that characterise it and the structures that support it. I explore a variety of forms and uses of improvisation, seeking the underlying attributes of improvisers at their most effective. I then explore the possibility of those qualities co-existing in work where structures such as an extant text and a fixed choreography are used, focusing firstly on the structures and qualities derived from Māori frameworks, then from those arising from Viewpoints. Finally I bring these frameworks together in a series of productions, testing their efficacy in relationship. In combining these two approaches I have developed a powerful tool for creating performance that is immediate and visceral, the attention of the performer firmly anchored to purpose and the present moment, playfully, without self-consciousness or undue tension. In this approach the life engendered lies with the ensemble rather than the individual artist. These frameworks advance our understanding of ways in which this immediacy can be achieved within artistic structures and are shown to be transferable to other contexts. By following a clear sense of purpose and focus on the audience, giving precise attention to choreography and timing, the actor is freed from the siren call of memory and the equally seductive temptation to plan the future, and is thereby held in a precise and vital engagement with the present.</p>

Kanohi ki te kanohi - Face to face: frameworks from tikanga Māori meet viewpoints improvisations, shocking the theatrical encounter into alive-li-ness

<p>How can we make theatre that sizzles with life that is kinaesthetically and viscerally experienced? As artists in the theatre our work is to combat the falling back into the habitual. We need to wake ourselves up, to see anew, to respond out of the moment: not out of memory (reaching into the past) nor out of desire (reaching into the future), both of which produce what Peter Brook has famously described as ‘deadly’ theatre. How can we consistently produce work that combats these ‘deadly’ tendencies? Further, can we create work that is simultaneously artistically structured or fixed, created within the moment so that artistry and improvisation combine? This thesis investigates structures derived from the rituals of the New Zealand Māori, combined with choreography arising out of Viewpoints improvisations, testing them out in the context of actor training, predominantly at Toi Whakaari: New Zealand Drama School. Together they provide a framework for theatrical work that anchors actors to the present moment. They refocus performers’ attention towards purpose rather than performance. They allow the artistically structured to coexist with the improvisationally free, engendering a sense of pulsing life, a quality I am calling 'alive-li-ness'. They re-frame the audience-performer relationship, drawing the audience from observation towards a more participatory stance, where the performance becomes a journey undertaken together. This is a creative research thesis in which my own performative research underlies the critical and theoretical examination through a series of productions. Through them I am able to test out this thesis both in performance and on the rehearsal floor, forming the spine of the thesis. I begin with examining theatrical improvisation, the form in which the future is genuinely unknown, the qualities that characterise it and the structures that support it. I explore a variety of forms and uses of improvisation, seeking the underlying attributes of improvisers at their most effective. I then explore the possibility of those qualities co-existing in work where structures such as an extant text and a fixed choreography are used, focusing firstly on the structures and qualities derived from Māori frameworks, then from those arising from Viewpoints. Finally I bring these frameworks together in a series of productions, testing their efficacy in relationship. In combining these two approaches I have developed a powerful tool for creating performance that is immediate and visceral, the attention of the performer firmly anchored to purpose and the present moment, playfully, without self-consciousness or undue tension. In this approach the life engendered lies with the ensemble rather than the individual artist. These frameworks advance our understanding of ways in which this immediacy can be achieved within artistic structures and are shown to be transferable to other contexts. By following a clear sense of purpose and focus on the audience, giving precise attention to choreography and timing, the actor is freed from the siren call of memory and the equally seductive temptation to plan the future, and is thereby held in a precise and vital engagement with the present.</p>

DEVELOPING INDEPENDENT AND CREATIVE ACTIVITY OF STUDENTS

In modern conditions, the educational process is required to focus on the development, socialization of the individual and the development of independent, critical, creative thinking skills. One of the most pressing issues today is the training of highly qualified specialists in accordance with consumer requirements, the formation of knowledge, skills and abilities of students in their chosen specialties, independent learning and practical activities.That is why researchers and advanced educators are looking for ways, technologies and methods to develop a creative approach to learning activities in students. One of the most advanced pedagogical technologies that has a positive effect today is the use of factors in the development of independent and creative research activities of students in the educational process.