For Atmospherics:

Designing feeling in an era of climate crisis

Tuesday, February 23

at 12:30pm

Free Zoom Lecture

Rachel Hann

Cultural Scenographer

Senior Lecturer in Performance & Design at Northumbria University, UK

Dr. Hann presents a proposal for ‘atmospherics’ as a process-based, non-binary approach to stage aesthetics and a model for future eco-decolonial scenographies.

Dr. Rachel Hann is a cultural scenographer and Senior Lecturer in Performance and Design based at Northumbria University, UK. Her research is focused on the material cultures of scenography, climate crisis, and trans* performance. Dr. Hann 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) on costume. Her 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’. Hann holds a PhD in theatre architecture from the University of Leeds and BA in Drama from the University of Hull.

Dr. Hann will discuss how 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. This presentation offers a proposal for ‘atmospherics’ as a process-based non-binary approach to stage aesthetics. She believes it is time to rethink binary stage aesthetics (of 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.

Register here to attend this Free Zoom webinar.

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

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.