Interdisciplinarity: Creative Education Futures Online Symposium
Wednesday 2 – Thursday 3 November 2022
Online
Online Symposium organised by the School of Art RMIT University
This symposium brings together key art and design educators from Australia and the Asia region to reflect on the significance of interdisciplinary practices for art and design education.
Interdisciplinary practices play a key role in the expanding creative industries and this is transforming art and design education. Interdisciplinary approaches foster new forms of innovation and creativity and offer an opportunity to reconsider assumed structures of education. They create an opportunity to be more inclusive of skills such as collaboration, communication, creativity and critical thinking; skills which are increasingly valued as education looks towards future industries and twenty-first century graduate outcomes. Over two days, four panels will discuss the challenges and opportunities for transforming art and design education, exploring key issues in planning for the future needs of students.
Key themes:
• How can interdisciplinary practices enhance the digital creative economy?
• What is the gap between tertiary art + design education and industry experience?
• How can interdisciplinary relationships be used to amplify and address pressing global and local social, environmental and cultural issues?
• What future pedagogies, industries, employment and educational experiences are emerging and how might interdisciplinary approaches support these?
• How can different disciplinary perspectives inform understanding and access to cultural heritage?
Participating Institutions:
RMIT University, Melbourne and Vietnam
Hong Kong Art School, Hong Kong
LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore
Macau University of Science and Technology, Macau
Register via Eventbrite
Interdisciplinarity: Creative Education Futures Online Symposium PDF download
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From the Liminal to the Transdisciplinary
10.00am–11.30am HK/Macau/Singapore
1.00pm–2.30pm AEDT
Chair: Dr Edmund Chow, LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore
(Re)lief/Lease of Life in Public Toilets: Exploring the Liminal
Presenters: Gavin Low, Allie Soh and Furqan Saini, LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore
ABANG GARDE: A transdisciplinary journey in the representation of Malay traditional music and an investigation into tradition
Presenters: Tzang Merwyn Tong and Zulkifli bin Mohamed Amin, LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore
ABSTRACTS:
(Re)lief/Lease of Life in Public Toilets: Exploring the Liminal
In exploring spaces, we decided to look at the liminal and investigated the space of the public toilet. Ofttimes disregarded and rarely discussed, the public toilet is an interesting dialectic of public and private, of biological purposes and social movements. Our initial thoughts began with mirth and disconcerted expressions which then began an exploration of what the public toilet is and means to everyone.
Through a community-led, user generated, ground-up initiative, stories garnered from a cross-section of people, interesting themes emerged. Apart from being a receptacle of human bodily functions and essential infrastructure, the public toilet is also a space of safety, of identity formation, of self-presentation, expression, transgression and, of art.
Our artwork is an interdisciplinary, site specific, installation piece that highlights these stories through the lens of image, the power of theatre and the endearing quality of sound. Through narrations of stories, happy, funny and sad; our artwork relooks the public toilet paradox-communal spaces that once the doors close become intensely personal.
With an accompanying video and site specific installation performance piece that narrates the journey of the public toilet through an evocative multi sensorial, sequencing technique of spoken word, image/word, sound/music, leading to a two-way process where the audience interacts with space through graffiti. In doing so, we hope to bring about questions, dialogue and discourse on the role of the public toilet, this time as a place of memory.
ABANG GARDE: A transdisciplinary journey in the representation of Malay traditional music and an investigation into tradition
What is Malayness? What does it mean to be Malay in Singapore, and how can ‘Malayness’ be represented in art or in music? These questions led two artists/educators from separate disciplines — film and music respectively — to investigate the cultural space of Malay traditional music as would ethnographers, with observations and in-depth interviews conducted with Malay musicians. The findings show that the culture itself is not containable as it is ‘living’, ‘breathing’, ‘changing’ and ‘ephemeral’. More specifically, Malay culture does not have a centre, institution, or authority, and is therefore ‘not yet defined’.
Inspired by the ephemeral quality of Malay traditional music, filmmaker/educator Tzang Merwyn Tong and musician/educator Zulkifli Mohamed Amin created an artwork that uses screenplay, dialogue and storytelling to explore and interrogate the representation and identity of Malay Traditional Music, using a locally composed orchestral piece ‘Jelaja Abang Garde’ as a centre. The intersecting methodology that emerged from this transdisciplinary collaboration was the timeline, a concept common to both disciplines in the making of a production. The timeline became both the method and the journey through which both artists talk to each other with our art without the use of words. This resulted in a film co-made by both individuals that not only captures the ephemeral quality of music, culture and film, but also led to insights in pedagogy for transdisciplinary collaborations.
BIONOTES:
Gavin Low
Theatre Practitioner and Educator
Gavin Low’s strong passion for theatre led him to wear many hats in the industry, acting as producer, director, performer, writer and dramaturg. Since 2008, Gavin has been lecturing at Republic Polytechnic. He has taught theatre history and production, arts management, critical thinking, and the art of story and creativity. Gavin’s research interests include finding an alternative pedagogy in actor training, particularly in incorporating Tao principles into helping a performer generate energy and presence on stage and building connection between actors. Gavin holds a Master of Arts in Arts Pedagogy and Practice from Goldsmiths, University of London. He is currently a lecturer in Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts.
Alicia Soh
Musician/ Arranger/ Educator
A prolific musician since 2011, Alicia Soh (Allie) has been exploring sound and space through the many sessions and performances that she has been called to play for. Her accolades include keyboards for Shigga Shay, and arrangements for Wonderboy, a Dick Lee movie. Allie has also collaborated with LASALLE alumnus Tan Tuan Hao in 2011 in writing “The Budget Song” for the opening of the Ngee-Ann Kongsi Library in LASALLE. The song was then presented and performed to Senior Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam. Having experienced various sonic landscapes from stylistic differences in music based on culture and arrangement, Allie has always remained curious on one’s interpretation of space and the discernment between noise and music, and how modernity has affected communication and expression amongst individuals in liminal public spaces. As music is very much a form of communication, new expressions through technology and sound (or lackthereof) might arise and Allie continues to explore new forms of expression through music.
musicaplebeia@gmail.com
linkedin
Furqan Saini
Art Director/ Fashion Image-Maker/ Educator
As an award-winning art director and image-maker, Rio Furqan Saini (@in3pid) both believes in and embodies the value of passion. With 20 years of experience under his belt, his main practice and philosophy of his craft of image-making in fashion is the juxtaposition of outward visual spectacle with introspective, intimate storytelling. Having lived in New York and Paris, he has relocated back to Singapore and is an adjunct lecturer across both Diploma and BA(Hons) programmes in the School of Fashion, LASALLE College of the Arts. His research interests lie at the intersection of emotion, memory, visual storytelling, gender/queer studies and fashion image-making. Under his tutelage, the work with his students has ushered in an exciting rise of image-makers winning multiple international awards in London, Milan, Paris and Singapore. He also runs his own practice consulting with diverse fashion and lifestyle brands throughout Asia, and creates evocative multidisciplinary digital art. Furqan holds a Master of Arts in Arts Pedagogy & Practice from Goldsmiths, University of London.
Tzang Merwyn Tong
Screenwriter / Film Director / Educator
Tzang Merwyn Tong (@tzang_m) is a Singapore-based scriptwriter, educator and independent filmmaker. An alumnus of Berlinale Talent Campus in 2005, Tzang has made four films that won awards and acclaim in Tel Aviv, Rotterdam, Montreal, Lund and Los Angeles. His most recent work Faeryville, 2015 is Singapore’s first dystopian teen movie and was selected to the be closing day film of the 2019 Central European Film Festival, Timisoara in Romania. He is currently a Lecturer at Republic Polytechnic’s School of Technology for the Arts teaching Visual Storytelling and Film Appreciation and is the founder and festival director of First Shot(s), a student-run film festival. Tzang holds a Masters in Arts Pedagogy and Practice from Goldsmiths, University of London.
Zulkifli Mohamed Amin
Multidisciplinary Artist-Educator
Artistic Director, Nusantara Arts
Assistant Conductor/Youth Leader, Orkestra Melayu Singapura
Zulkifli Mohamed Amin (@zulkifli.music) is widely acknowledged as a proponent of Malay music and a multidisciplinary artist-educator who sees Gen Alpha as the catalyst of change in arts education and cultural identity in Singapore. His influential roles in Orkestra Melayu Singapura and Nusantara Arts provided platforms for young musicians to hone their musical sounds and voice and collaborate with artists from other disciplines. As an educator, he considers teaching in itself an art form — a constant reflection of action, creativity in developing the craft, appreciation of flaws, recognition of bravery, and knowing each canvas as unique. He holds a Masters in Arts Pedagogy and Practice from Goldsmiths, University of London. Zulkifli is the recipient of the National Arts Council’s Young Artist Award 2018. -
How can different disciplinary perspectives inform understanding and access to cultural heritage
12.00pm–1.30pm HK/Macau/Singapore
3.00pm–4.30pm AEDT
Chair: Dr Drew Pettifer, RMIT University, Australia
Presenters:
Dr Lous Yu , Director, Hong Kong Art School
Fiona Wong, Hong Kong Art School
Kay Mei Ling Beadman
ABSTRACTS:
Dr Louis Yu
The concept of culture and the concept of art are so closely intertwined that it is impossible to teach the art without addressing the question of "what is culture". This short sharing is a brief introduction of the BEAM culture framework which may help to answer the question.
Fiona Wong Lai Ching
This paper discusses Wong’s art practice which explores the cultural links between contemporary and traditional Chinese culture. Known for making hand-built sculptural works of clothing that weave porcelain fragments together, her art functions at the intersection of art, design, fashion and history. In this presentation Wong will connect her artistic research to her pedagogical practice.
Kay Mei Ling Beadman
This paper offers a brief introduction to Beadman’s own interdisciplinary practice which examines and challenges assumptions around what a Hong Kong identity might look like. This feeds on, and into, a belief system of multi-vocal, co-constructed, non-hierarchical teaching and learning, leading to how that might be practically embodied and feed into art education teaching practices.
BIONOTES:
Mr. Lous Yu has over 30 years of arts management experience. His previous roles include the Executive Director of Performing Arts, West Kowloon Cultural District, Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Arts Development Council and the Executive Director of the Hong Kong Arts Centre. In 2019, after the opening of the first two performing arts facilities in the West Kowloon Cultural District — The Xiqu Centre and the Freespace, Mr. Yu went to the London School of Economics to study Executive MSc in Cities. He returned to Hong Kong in 2020 and is an advocate of the study of cities and culture. Since December of 2020, he has given in various universities and organizations lectures on “What makes a city cultural”. His book “What makes a city cultural” was published in Chinese by Chung Hwa Book Company in July 2022.
Fiona Wong Lai Ching is a renowned and well-respected ceramic artist in Hong Kong. She was selected as the Artist of the Year (Visual Arts) in the Hong Kong Arts Development Awards 2017. She received a Starr Foundation award from the Asian Cultural Council in 2000 and was elected member of the International Academy of Ceramics in Geneva in 2007. She has been appointed Expert Advisor for Hong Kong Museums since 2014. Since 2004, Fiona has curated various research and social art projects such including "My Soil My Land (2006)" a community project that involved 500 children using local clay. She was an invited artist of the 6th Echigo Tsumari Triennale in Japan (2015) and created site specific translucent porcelain works "Gogasha" in an abandoned house in the area on the issue of urban rural gap. In 2017 she was commissioned to curate the project "Hi! Houses Law UK Folk Museum" to create new perspectives on reading local history. Fiona's artworks have been widely exhibited both locally and internationally, and have been collected and treasured by numerous museums and private sectors, including "Blue Wings" by the British Museum in 2018. Fiona has participated in over 50 solo and group exhibitions as well as art projects of various kinds over the years. She has also been invited to participate in artist-in-residence programmes across the globe, in countries such as Australia, Germany, Japan, and the United States.
Kay Mei Ling Beadman is an artist, researcher, educator and co-founder of Hidden Space, an independent artist-run space in Hong Kong. In her multidisciplinary practice, she uses her Chinese and English mixed race as an autoethnographic springboard to explore aspects of complex dual identity formation, drawing on embodied aspects of lived experience amid socio-politically and culturally constructed assumptions. Kay was born in England, zigzagged between HK and UK growing up, but has lived and worked in Hong Kong since 1999. She has a BFA from the University of Reading, UK, an MFA from RMIT, Australia, and is currently a PhD candidate at City University of Hong Kong. -
What future pedagogies, industries, employment and educational experiences will emerge and how might interdisciplinarity support these?
10.00am–11.30am HK/Macau/Singapore
1.00pm–2.30pm AEDT
Chair: Dr Tammy Wong Hulbert, RMIT University
Presenters:
Peng Liu
Lingqi Kong
Bin Hu
The panel consist of three presenters who are specialized in fine arts, design and visual communication. Liu’s session focuses on how interdisciplinary is reflected and engaged in teaching and learning environment at postgraduate programmes in Fine Arts. The curriculums of MFA and Ph.D. programmes, which are designed according to Outcome Based Assessment (OBA), are student-centered. The programmes encourage creative practice to be carried out as flexible, individual, and experimental conductivities that result in multidisciplinary experience. Case studies drawn from Research Methodology are analyzed as examples. Kong's session explores how interdisciplinarity are at the core of future design teaching and learning, as well as tries to explain the relationship among art history, creativity and design thinking and the possibility of applying creative thinking to a broader range of disciplines. Bin’s section aimed to contribute to the field of visual communication design practice by developing new understandings of how designers devise new processes to translate traditional Chinese symbols to contemporary settings and to produce new ways of visualising the relationship between traditional Chinese symbols and contemporary visual communication design as part of the research outcomes.
BIONOTES:
Peng Liu is Assistant Professor in Fine Arts and Associate Director for International Affairs in the Faculty of Humanities and Arts, Macau University of Science and Technology. His Ph.D. obtained at Curtin University, Australia and recent research are in the field of Culture studies and Visual Culture, with a focus on the notion of embodiment. He is also a practicing visual artist working with mixed mediums and exhibiting in Australia, China, Japan and U.S. He is interested in Fashion Studies, Museum Studies, Digital Humanities, and Humanity Architecture. His recent publications include co-authored monography Male Idols and Branding in Chinese Luxury (Bloomsbury), and journal articles “Weather as medium” (The Journal of Architecture), “Museum as multisensorial site” (Museum Management and Curatorship), “Bodily changes” (SAGE Open), “Walking in the Forbidden City” (Visual Studies). He is preparing his solo show in coming December in China.
Lingqi Kong is Assistant professor in Visual Communication Design, Faculty of Humanities and Arts, Macau University of Science and Technology. He has a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies from Loughborough University. His research focuses on art and design as forms of representation in which cultural identities are constructed and communicated, and the cross-cultural interactive processes and forms. His publications have predominantly been concerned with graphic design and he has tried to enhance the theorization of graphic design and traditional handicraft.
Bin Hu obtained his Ph.D. from Creative Industries Faculty, Queensland University of Technology. Until recently, he was Discipline Research Leader heading up Interactive Design at Faculty of Humanities and Arts, Macao University of Science and Technology. He is a design academic and researcher specialising in application and product of participatory design for eHealth and Healthcare. His research area of expertise is in interaction and visual design for e-health applications with a specific focus on using participatory and co-design methods for design, development and evaluation of interactive health promoting technologies, youth emotional cognition and health. Dr Bin Hu had a leading role in design research across a series of national and international projects, resulting in a wide range of novel technologies, ranging from mobile health apps to education and capacity-building platforms, contributing as part of large transdisciplinary teams. He successfully supervised three PhD and twenty-five Master of Digital Media students. He was the winner of China "Postdoctoral International Exchange Program"-Incoming Talent Project, he also obtained Australian government Global Talent Independent (GTI) program. -
Post disciplinary tactics, creative industries pathways and ecological futures
12.00pm–1.30pm HK/Macau/Singapore
3.00–4.30pm AEDT
Chair: Associate Professor Kristen Sharp, RMIT University
Falling out of fashion: post disciplinary tactics in education to address the impact of fashion practice
Presenter: Associate Professor Ricarda Bigolin, RMIT University
The Creative Industries and graduate pathways
Presenter: Associate Professor Scott Brook, RMIT University
Creativity in East Asia and Australia Presenter: Professor Daniel HarrisABSTRACTS:
Falling out of fashion: post disciplinary tactics in education to address the impact of fashion practice
This presentation will discuss the practice of changing fashion design curricula over recent years in the School of Fashion and Textiles at RMIT University. Fashion curricula has tended to favor singular ideals of practice, notably Eurocentric in modes and values. This emphasis negated consideration of emerging markets and other modes of making and practicing fashion and dress. In questioning disciplinary boundaries other practices and methods might emerge better placed to reconcile the well documented and significant environmental, political and social impact of fashion industries. Facing the challenges nascent in any discipline, means questioning the limits, boundaries and origins of a discipline, to determine ways to transgress.
‘Fashion’ as a discipline, emerged in the late 19th century as an enterprise derived from local trades, domestic economies, dress making and tailoring. It became synonymous with serialized production lines, buoyed by innovations of the industrial age. Fashion systems and education have long neglected to acknowledge alternate and non-western dress and clothing practices. A needed part of curriculum development is a rethinking of domains of a discipline, sub disciplines and the ‘post disciplinary’ Braidotti (2019). Origins, classifications, and proximities are examined to suggest how fashion might fall ‘out of fashion’. This seeks to reclaim the agency of practices of materials, bodies, dress and clothes to assert alternate and more sustainable practice.
The Creative Industries and graduate pathways
Australian universities are international leaders in Creative and Cultural Industries research, however curriculum development for creative graduate employment has received far less attention. This is understandable, as the CCIs are a new policy object that challenges existing models of creative education, and this perceived challenge to the values and practices of arts educators have, to a certain extent, discouraged reform. However, it is clear that new curriculum thinking is required if Australia’s creative graduates, whose labour market outcomes are relatively poor by international standards, are to seize the employment opportunities in Australia’s growing CCIs. Inter- and multi-disciplinarity are keys to this rethinking.
In this talk I provide a brief local history of the CCIs in order to respond to a number of misperceptions that have stymied the engagement of Australian academics; eg that it is an imported UK phenomenon: that it represents an economistic and neoliberal agenda: that software is included in order to inflate employment numbers: that the CCIs are a threat to practice-based education. None of these ‘intuitive critiques’ stand up to rigorous scrutiny. I will also discuss national graduate data from Australia and the UK that shows the value of double creative/non-creative majors for creative graduates, as well as the importance of preparing creatives for non-creative employment.
Creativity in East Asia and Australia
Asia as Method: Toward Deimperialisation, is a groundbreaking (2010) text in which author Kuan-Hsing Chen has pointed to the one-way flow of knowledge into Asia from the West and has urged using this heuristic in the production to de-universalise western discourses ”through the unique histories and cultures of diverse Asian societies.” Like Raewyn Connell’s Southern Theory, Chen’s work argues for a kind of inter-Asian southern theory that goes beyond the dominance of Western referents. Working from the Taiwanese context, Chen is a leader in inter-Asian cultural studies and centers his analysis in the dynamic and changeable forces of modern East Asian history. Asia as Method has been taken up in a range of ways over the previous 12 years, including strongly in Education across a multitude of national contexts, including South Korea, Hong Kong and Australia.
Dan Harris’ Australian Research Council Future Fellowship (2017–2023) builds on Chen’s scholarship to address the development of Australasian definitions — and distinct practices — of creativity and creative higher education, a core component of creative economic and cultural policy, by attending to intercultural understanding and creative collaboration. It recognises and values creative practice as culturally — and contextually —generated, and investigates the unique contribution of an ‘Australasian creativity’ as specific to this geopolitical place. It investigates the experiences of creative/cultural industries professionals as well as higher education scholars, across digital, technological, arts and science fields, as well as teacher-educators. The study investigates higher education training in creative skills (beyond the creative industries), to meet current and future global discursive, creative and innovative education and workforce development.
BIONOTES:
Associate Professor Ricarda Bigolin is a practice-based researcher and educator and the Associate Dean of Fashion and Textiles Design at RMIT University. Her research explores critical tactics and interventions to challenge how fashion is produced, used and consumed. This extends to practice, arts-based and material methods, critical tactics of wearing and performing to reveal relationships between fashion, value and use. Current research investigates alternate historical clothing practices in Australia offering insight into material circularity and prolonging product use. Her research has won international awards and prizes and Ricarda maintains ongoing teaching and research collaborations with education and industry partners worldwide.
Scott Brook is Associate Professor of Communication in the School of Media and Communication, RMIT, where he was previously Associate Dean Communication from 2018–21. Prior to joining RMIT he was Associate Professor of Writing at the University of Canberra, where he was a Research Fellow in the Centre for Creative and Cultural Research (2014–16), and is currently a Distinguished Visiting Fellow. He has been a Lead CI and CI on two ARC Discovery Projects on creative graduate outcomes, and is currently a CI on an ARC Industry Linkage Project on creative microcredentials and youth arts. He is the coeditor of Gender and the Creative Labour Market (Palgrave 2022), editor of Pierre Bourdieu’s Thinking about Art – at Art School (CCCR publications 2015), and a Special Issue of TEXT on practice-based research.
Professor Daniel Harris is Associate Dean, Research & Innovation in the School of Education, RMIT University (Melbourne, Australia), an Australian Research Council Future Fellow, and Co-Director of Creative Agency research lab: www.creativeresearchhub.com. Harris is editor of the book series Creativity, Education and the Arts (Palgrave), and has authored over 100 articles/book chapters, 19 books, as well as plays, films and spoken word performances. Their research focuses on creativity studies, cultural, sexual and gender diversities, and on performance and activism. They are committed to the power of collaborative creative practice and social justice research to inform social change.
Image credit: Interdisciplinarity: Creative Education Futures Online Symposium, 2022.