SPECIAL LECTURE
The Unseen in Play: Why We Should Care about How Cognition Shapes Asian Intercultural Training, Performance, and the Ethics of Collaboration
by Assoc Prof Maiya Murphy (Singapore)
28 NOV, SAT | 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM
⦿ Esplanade Annexe Studio
Socio-cultural analyses of bodies, power, and identity have helped us understand the complexity of social flows that are negotiated in Asian intercultural performance. Accounts of human function such as cognition or biology have contributed very little to what might appear to be questions best addressed in the sociological domain. With respect to cognition, artists often have specific guidelines about overt cognitive activity - where and when to "analyze" or "think" during the processes of training, creation, and performance are often carefully circumscribed. "Do first, think later" is a common imperative for many kinds of actor training. At best, "cognitive activity," can be understood as helpful and at worst, destructive to training and creative processes. Since the twenty-first century, however, cognitive science has come closer to the priorities of trainers and artists, with even closer alliances to Asian philosophy and body-based pedagogy. Through paradigms such as 4-E cognition where cognition is understood as fully embodied (not just in the head), embedded (always already emergent from a context), enactive (realized through interdependent action), and extended (spread into tools, environment, and other people), "thinking" is now understood as much closer to our "doings" in the studio. This presentation (or lecture demonstration if you are interested - see my note below) explores how newer cognitive paradigms such as enaction, participatory sense-making, and predictive processing can not only help us articulate the robust complexity of the practices we already do, but point ways forward to shape things that we want to do even better.
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