Thank you to everyone who joined us for our Intersections series event: What in the World is Research-Creation?

We conversed with our guests about their interpretations and reflections about research-creation, learning about their creative processes and projects along the way. The panel discussed different topics including how they approach and think about research and creation in their work, use of technology, listening in to our bodies and out towards our surroundings, the importance of art in our lives, and reflections on society.

Missed or want to review some of this intriguing conversation and exploration about research-creation in the arts? View a full recording of the event on our YouTube channel:

We look forward to seeing you next time!

Next event: Gathering+

Join us on January 21 and 22 for our next event, an interdisciplinary workshop bringing curious minds from across the fine arts together! Check our website soon regarding how to register for this exciting Gathering+.

Happy research and creation, 

December 2, 2021 – 7:00 – 8:30 p.m. on Zoom 

Join host and Asterix Graduate Assistant Jaime Johnson with Master of Fine Arts students Jaimee Jarvee, Christina Milinusic, and Carla Simon as they explore research and creation in the arts through the lens of their own work and processes.

The term and methodology of research-creation recently gained significant recognition and popularity; however, its meaning varies even to many people who use it to describe their own work. This informal discussion visits the many paths and terms surrounding this topic including practice-based research, research-based practice, and more.

They will also consider and discuss how student artists define their work, communicate their practices, and present their research and creation to those inside and outside the arts. 

Register here for this free event: 
https://uleth.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAkdemhrDIiGNXjaOIs5vJ0OOvvO3jAZkc2

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Event Recording and Social Media Contact Links

Thank you to everyone who joined us for our second Intersections series event of the term, Working Hard or Hardly Working? How to Start and Sustain a Career in the Arts.  

We conversed with our panel of amazing professional artists as they reviewed and reflected on the winding paths that led them to their current positions and discussed how to best navigate the endless possibilities of attaining a successful career in the arts. Topics included how to gain essential skills in our art practices when working in positions outside our chosen field, when to say “yes” and, more importantly, when to say “no,” the necessity of building strong relationships, benefits of collaboration within and without your field, and more! 

Missed or want to review some of these valuable topics?
View a full recording of the event here:  

https://uleth.zoom.us/recording/detail?meeting_id=B1YZhN2vQaanetnzqULLPQ%3D%3D 

Want to know more about the panelists current work? Read on! 

Jesse Northey, Artist Manager 
victorypool.ca  
@victorypoolmusic 

Christopher Schultz, Marketing Director, Triglass Productions
topherschultz.com 
triglassproductions.com 
@Topher.exe 

Geneviève Paré, Associate Director of the Canadian Wilderness Artist Residency 
http://canadianwildernessresidency.ca/  

Kasia Sosnowski, AAC Works Manager, Allied Arts Council of Lethbridge
kasiasosnowski.com 
@bad.bucket  

We look forward to seeing you next time! 

Tuesday, March 16 – 7:00pm via Zoom

Registration Link:
https://uleth.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJErceiupj8oHNNiKbAOztXjM93pSJcHW_CT

“How do I start a career in the arts, and how do I sustain it?” These often-asked questions by many Fine Arts students have no simple answer. For many students, the goal of pursuing a Fine Arts degree is to “become an artist,” however, simply being an artist does not come with a paycheque. 

Becoming an artist often involves a trade-off between dedicating time and energy to sustaining your artistic practice and working a “day job” in order to pay the bills. Whether new media, drama, music, or visual arts, some clear employment paths in the arts exist, such as graphic designer, actor, singer, or painter, as well as many less obvious including lighting technician, properties master, luthier, and preparator. 

Featuring former BFA students explaining their own “long and winding road” working in the arts, this Intersections event examines the importance, value, and methods of pursuing “day jobs” directly relevant to your artistic practice.   Attendees of this panel-style discussion will hear about some atypical job opportunities in the arts and discuss how, why, and where the panelists found these jobs including both good and bad experiences. 

While this panel will not tell you “how to get a job,” we will look at important topics such as: 

• Complementing your artistic practice with an artistic “day job” 
• Transferability or “leveraging” artistic skills to other employment sectors 
• Importance of volunteerism to increase paid opportunities 
• The role of networking and relationships in getting gigs 

Thank you to all who joined us for ASTeRIX’s first Intersections series event of the term, “Teamwork Makes the Dream Work: The Hows and Whys of Artistic Collaboration.”

Presenter info 

Hali Heavy Shield, member of the Blood Tribe of southern Alberta; PhD student in visual art and Blackfoot storytelling

Thea Patterson, choreographer, performer, dramaturge, and researcher
https://theapatterson.wordpress.com/

Migueltzinta Solis, mestizXXX interdisciplinary artist; PhD student in Cultural, Social and Political Thought
https://migueltzinta.com/

Tyler Stewart, curator, writer, and MA candidate in Cultural, Social, and Political Thought
https://teestewww.com/

 
References and reading 

Archibald, Jo-Ann. 2008. Indigenous Storywork: Educating the Heart, Mind, Body, and Spirit. UBC Press. https://www.ubcpress.ca/indigenous-storywork  

Bennett, Jane. Vibrant Matter : a Political Ecology of Things.Durham: Duke University Press, 2010.   

Assemblages are ad hoc groupings of diverse elements, of vibrant materials of all sorts. Assemblages are living, throbbing confederations that are able to function despite the persistent presence of energies that confound them from within. They have uneven topographies, because some of the points at which the various affects and bodies cross paths are more heavily tracked than others, and so power is not distributed equally across its surface. Assemblages are not governed by any central head: no one materiality or type of material has sufficient competence to determine consistently the trajectory or impact of the group. The effects generated by an assemblage are, rather, emergent properties, emergent in that their ability to make something happen (a newly inflected materialism, a blackout, a hurricane, a war on terror) is distinct from the sum of the vital force of each materiality considered alone. Each member and proto-member of the assemblage has a certain vital force, but there is also an effectivity proper to the grouping as such: an agency of the assemblage. And precisely because each member-actant maintains an energetic pulse slightly “off ” from that of the assemblage, an assemblage is never a stolid block but an open-ended collective, a “non-totalizable sum.” (24) 

Cole, Arda L., and Knowles, J. Gary. 2007. Handbook of the Arts in Qualitative Research. Sage Publishing. https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/handbook-of-the-arts-in-qualitative-research/book226626 

Kieley, Kelli, and Naveau, Natasha. Dec, 9 2020. “What does a meaningful collaboration between settler and Indigenous artists look like?” CBC Arts (online). https://www.cbc.ca/arts/what-does-a-meaningful-collaboration-between-settler-and-indigenous-artists-look-like-1.5833448  

“Through their work, the duo have been learning a great deal from each other and say their collaborations have been successful because they listen, communicate honestly, and face problems with courage.” 

Lacasse, Serge, and Stévance, Sophie. 2013. Research-Creation in Music and the Arts: Towards a Collaborative Interdiscipline. Taylor & Francis Group. 

“Rather than focussing on individuals, we envisage research-creation in music as a collaborative territory. Accordingly, to respect the dual expertise so indispensable to the field, the favoured approach most often involves bringing creators and researchers together within a single project in which they pool their expertise, in the spirit of collaboration (Smith and Dean 2009a). Thus, the approach is not merely focussed on the individual (researcher-creator or creator), but on the combination of the abilities of each participant put to use for the good of the project” (16). 

“… we strongly believe that one of the most promising paths for the future of the approach involves collaboration, so that rather than putting an emphasis on the individual artist, the focus shifts toward the objectives of the project” (136-137). 

“While cooperation designates the mere grouping of individuals aiming at specific results, collaboration corresponds to a dynamic framework of activities within which a small group of individuals interact in the pursuit of a common goal. In this case, they work together in the context of interdependence and the acknowledgement of each other’s expertise…” (138). 

“Thus, cooperation is characterized by informal relations between individuals who generally work independently and whose respective results are later drawn together, often without systematic interaction between them. Conversely, a collaborative research-creation project is a voluntary process in which experts work together dynamically on the grounds of a shared understanding” (138). 

Robinson, Dylan. 2020. Hungry Listening: Resonant Theory for Indigenous Sound Studies. University of Minnesota Press. 

[The book’s final chapter is a transcription of a conversation between author Dylan Robinson, along with scholars Deborah Wong and Ellen Waterman] “How to arrive at a collaboration based on Deep Listening? For sure, it wouldn’t be an artist writing a strategic grant to take advantage of new Canada Council funding for Indigenous arts. I suspect that a truly ethical collaboration would have to start with an invitation from Indigenous artists and not the other way around. … Exactly: it’s all about listening. I don’t yet know how to do it, but I know I aspire to a radical willingness to claim nothing. To claim no knowledge, no authority, and maybe not even request collaboration: I wonder whether elevating collaboration as the ideal terms for encounter isn’t another kind of hunger. Maybe the first step is to sit just outside the door, without any expectation that we might even be invited in” (246).