In-person Mini-Hartley on Intermedial Composition Seminar with Erin Brannigan Event

By ‘intermedial composition’ we refer to the process of convergence across multiple art forms in the creative act, including the way in which compositional practices in one field might inform – and transform – those in another.

Erin’s research has previously been about dance and film, and dance and visual arts and we’re working together on a new project around dance and music.    

14:00 Erin Brannigan: Intermedial Composition Across the Contemporary Arts  

Erin will present methods for theorising intermedial works of art that involve choreography, looking specifically at the film-dance and visual arts-dance relationships with an eye towards an emerging project with Drew Crawford across dance and music. She will also discuss the aims and methods of the UNSW School of Arts and Media's Intermedial Composition Network, which she leads and co-founded in 2015. 

Drew Crawford: Developing strategies for site-responsive composition 
Drew will focus on the intermedial, choreographic strategies he’s employing in his new work We’ll find out when we get there for Plus Minus Ensemble and the John Hansard Gallery and its place in a broader research project being developed with Erin. 

BREAK – afternoon tea

16:00   Structured discussion and activities around inter-mediality with colleagues from across the Faculty

In this session, we anticipate there will be an opportunity for colleagues to introduce their own intermedial practices or interests to the group, exchange and discuss ideas of inter-mediality and disciplinarity and how it relates or might relate to their research, creative practice, and curriculum development.   

Speaker information 

Dr Erin Brannigan is Associate Professor in Theatre and Performance at the University of New South Wales. She is of Irish and Danish political exile, convict, and settler descent.

Her publications include Dancefilm:

• Choreography and the Moving Image (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011)
• Choreography, Visual Art and Experimental Composition 1950s -1970s (London: Routledge, 2022)

She has published various chapters and articles in film, performance and dance journals and anthologies. Her current research project is Precarious Movements: Dance and the Museum with Tate UK, National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of NSW, Monash University Museum of Art, Shelley Lasica and Zoe Theodore.

A second monograph associated with this project is forthcoming: The Persistence of Dance: Choreography as Concept and Material in Contemporary Art (Michigan University Press, 2023). 

Working in the fields of dance, film and the visual arts as an academic, Erin was named the national ‘Field Leader of Theatre and Performance Studies’ by The Australian newspaper in the September 2019 special report.  Her research explores the condition of dance through its intermedial relationship with other art forms. 

Generated by specific works of art and art practices, her studies cover:

• dance and the screen arts
• gesture as a cross-disciplinary conceptual framework
• interdisciplinary compositional strategies of the avant-garde (historic and contemporary)
• minimalism as a site of disciplinary assertion
• experiment-experience nexus through a research-workshop practice with local artists

Intermedial Composition Network 

In 2015, Erin co-founded the University of NSW School of Arts and Media's Intermedial Composition Network, connecting scholars representing the different branches of creative practice, curriculum and research in the school from Music, Creative Writing, Theatre and Performance Studies, and Media. The group aims to consolidate and build on research expertise in compositional knowledge and intermedial creative practices in both practice and theory, providing a platform for such work within the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture and beyond to its network of industry contacts, and finally to the public through a focus on literacies related to intermedial work.  
  
The network explores the creative practices of leading artists working in all media as a site of experiment, innovation, resilience and imagination. By intermedial composition we refer to the process of convergence across multiple art forms in the creative act, including the way in which compositional practices in one field might inform – and transform – those in another. This focus on inter-mediality within our collective both works with and against our post-disciplinary historical moment, honouring both discipline specificity and intermedial experimentation. Alongside practice, our members understand that insight into creative process is enhanced by interdisciplinary conversation, and that such insights reveal novel methods and outcomes and support their application to broader fields of social and cultural activity.