The Orion
Lecture Series in Fine Arts

Through the generous support of the Orion Fund in Fine Arts, the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Victoria, is pleased to present:

Dr. Rachel Hann

Cultural scenographer

 

“For Atmospherics: Designing Feeling
in an Era of Climate Crisis”

12:30 – 1:30 pm (PST)
Tuesday, February 23, 2021 

Free & open to the public via Zoom

Presented by UVic’s Department of Theatre
For more information on this lecture please email: theatre@uvic.ca 

The material culture of scenography

Dr. Rachel Hann is a cultural scenographer and senior lecturer in performance and design based at Northumbria University, Newcastle, UK. Her research is focused on the material cultures of scenography, climate crisis and trans performance.

Rachel is author of Beyond Scenography (Routledge 2019), which was shortlisted for the Prague Quadrennial 2019 Publication Prize. In 2013, she co-founded the research network Critical Costume and in 2014 co-edited a special issue of Scene (Intellect Books) on costume. Rachel’s work in the formation of this network was shortlisted for the Theatre and Performance Research Association (TaPRA) Early Career Prize 2017 for “leadership in costume and practice research”. Rachel holds a PhD in theatre architecture from the University of Leeds and BA in Drama from the University of Hull.

 

Designing feeling in an era of climate crisis

Atmospheres are vital to the practice of scenography. Blending emotion and feeling with technologies and materials, atmospheres confuse established models of binary aesthetics (of human and world, artifice and nature) that reflect a materialist uncertainty in an era of climate crisis. Rachel’s presentation will offer a proposal for “atmospherics” as a process-based, non-binary approach to stage aesthetics.

Put simply, it is high time to rethink binary stage aesthetics—such as stage-auditorium, character-actor, female-male, Western-Other—to offer models of designing feeling that celebrate the indeterminacy of atmospherics as a model for future eco-decolonial scenographies.  

 

About the Orion Fund

Established through the generous gift of an anonymous donor, the Orion Fund in Fine Arts is designed to bring distinguished visitors from other parts of Canada—and the world—to the University of Victoria’s Faculty of Fine Arts, and to make their talents and achievements available to faculty, students, staff and the wider Greater Victoria community who might otherwise not be able to experience their work.

The Orion Fund also exists to encourage institutions outside Canada to invite regular faculty members from our Faculty of Fine Arts to be visiting  artists/scholars at their institutions; and to make it possible for Fine Arts faculty members to travel outside Canada to participate in the academic life of foreign institutions and establish connections and relationships with them in order to encourage and foster future exchanges.

Free and open to the public  |  Seating is limited (500 Zoom connections) |  Visit our online events calendar at www.uvic.ca/events