Interdisciplinary performance
The impact of digital media and the cross-pollination of ideas through artistic collaboration provide rich research opportunities for many staff.
Mark Harvey has presented performance research that traverses visual arts and choreography in Europe, America, Australia and Asia.
His current research centres around notions of interactive public performances, social practices and social sculpture.
He presented his performance work Political Climate Wrestle at the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013 and is currently recreating this work for Te Tuhi art gallery across the Auckland region.
The work involves Mark arguing with volunteers about climate change and wrestling with them, with one aim being to contribute to international discourse about climate change and attitudes towards it.
Alys Longley's research is concentrated in two areas: firstly interdisciplinary creative practice – dance making, film-making, creative writing, drawing and making artist-books.
Her book The Foreign Language of Motion was published by Winchester University Press (UK) in early 2014. Another focus is "dance and ecology".
She is currently leading the project Fluid City, a dance/science/education collaboration on water sustainability in Auckland City. Dance workshops and performances are an important way of bringing creativity and imagination into public thinking on environmental issues that are important to all of us.