Ben Spatz, Nazlıhan Eda Erçin, and Agnieszka Mendel
“Judaica: An Embodied Laboratory for Songwork” was a two-year research project that explored the construction of identity through the act of singing. The heart of the project was a six-month laboratory period in which the three of us worked closely together, on a full-time basis, as skilled performance practitioners investigating the cultural and epistemic potential of songs. In response to critical work in the humanities and social sciences calling for greater recognition of embodied knowledge and practice in emerging research paradigms, the Judaica project implemented a new type of laboratory, in which interactions of technique, identity, and place gave rise to new forms of knowledge. Drawing on critical theories of identity, as well as studies of laboratory research in the sciences, the project offers a model for the post-technoscientific laboratory as a “place of making” in which bodies, songs, actions, objects, and concepts come together in unexpected and generative ways. Among the key discoveries of the project was a new method for sustained, experimental, embodied practice, grounded in critical theories of gender and racial identity, as well as a new approach to the editing and co-authorship of video works generated through this process. These video materials are both data for cultural researchers and research outcomes in their own right.
Between May 2017 and October 2017
University of Huddersfield |
Embodied Research Practice Research Artistic Research Jewish Studies Interdisciplinary Voice Critical Race Theory New Materialism Performer Training Postdramatic Theater Critical Autoethnography Extended Voice Song And Singing Jerzy Grotowski
Performance Studies Psychophysical Performance Critical Race Studies Ethnomusicology Critical Autoethnography Visual Anthropology Transmedia Studies Artistic Research Experimental Theater Dance And Somatics Interdisciplinary Voice Studies Jewish Studies
“Judaica: An Embodied Laboratory for Songwork” was made possible by the 2016-2018 Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Leadership Fellow project ‘Judaica: An Embodied Laboratory for Song-Action’ [grant reference AH/ N006879/1].