Na Hye-Seok and Mary Wollstonecraft Live!
Site- based and multimedia performance: a strategy for social intervention

Technical Areas: Reality Jam / Border Transmission

This practice as research looks toward theatre from the perspective of multimedia performance. Using the potential of cyberspace as a creative space and perhaps an ‘unmarked’ site we find new ways to link the historical and philosophical aspects of feminism and theatre..  By relating this framework to the material lives of 21st century women full account is taken of race, sex, gender, class and social and economic difference.

A virtual encounter between Na Hye-seok (1948-1896), the first Korean woman painter in western style and Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797), the first British feminist. We show how replaying past performances in different locations can create living monuments to explore and challenge normative representations of gender and race. The concepts of expanded theatre and cultural translation are harnessed to investigate the importance of theatre as a cultural asset of the global community. Building on the reputation of Fragments & Monuments (IFTR/FIRT 2006 and 2007) for site based multimedia performance we present  the most recent collaboration in cyberspace.

The  methodology is interdisciplinary drawing on theatre history and practices, fine art and technological innovation. By reflecting on performativity and  performance in terms of  the construction of identity on and offline.  Anna and Taey invite the audience to share in  this exciting ongoing new media and theatre project.

Workshop v1. in N16

Strangers in the Neighbourhood

Everyday life in the familiar dwelling place.

How did you end up here?

What do you see in the middle of night through the window?

Which neighbourhood would you want to live in after your life?

What makes us be 'together' here?
When do you feel a sense of belonging?

Taey and Anna invite you to a homely discussion and house tea party about strangers' intervention in the neighbourhood (for them, N16 Stoke Newington)' this Sunday in Princess May Road. We would like to hear about your exploration of dalston, kingsland, stoke newington, newington green, your neighbourhood, your strangeland.

“ The lure of the local is the pull of place that operates on each of us, exposing our politics and our spiritual legacies. It is the geographical component if our need to belong somewhere, one antidote to a prevailing alienation. ”

- Lucy Lippard, The Lure of the Local: Senses of Place in a Multicentered Society

This project has been invited at International Federation of Theatre Research 2008 as a performative lecture of Taey & Anna.

Biography

See  Birch, A (2006) Staging and Citing Gendered Meanings: A practice-based study of representational strategies in live and mediated performance in Haas (Hg.): Der postfeministische Diskurs.pp 79-100, Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, Birch, A (2008) Sighting / Citing History through Performance : The Wollstonecraft Live Experience! in Oddey and White Modes of Spectating Intellect. Her visual analysis and making website ‘The Performance Kit’  was launched at University of Cape Town  2007.
http://www.wollstonecraftlive.com
http://www.theperformancekit.com

Taey  is a visual media art practitioner as well as researcher and a PhD candidate at SMARTlab, University of East London. Her practice background is narrative based photography and interactive multimedia installation. In her virtual space, she examines the position of media art itself as an elsewhere construction, a borderless method of overcoming political boundaries in the search for self-identity as far-east Asian and sexual minority in the postcolonial phenomenon. She wrote many of articles and essays around the subject of digital community and virtual immigrants. Her latest article, ‘Embodied Narrative: The Virtual Nomad and the Meta Dreamer’ has selected in INTELLECT (International Journal for Performance Arts and Digital Media journal in 2007. her film, ‘nightscanning’ has been invited to Art District, Generation II in Poland (2007), New Media Art Festival in Seoul (2007) recently. Her various exhibitions have travelled to London, Paris, Doncaster, Köln, Seoul, and many other international cities. Taey has collaborated with Fragments & Monuments since 2004 as a visual artist and designer.
http://www.taey.com