Invitation to the Defense of Serena Lee
The PhD-in-Practice program at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna kindly invites you to the defense of Serena Lee's dissertation project How the line curves.
The Examination Panel is made up of: Moira Hille (chair), Renate Lorenz and Anette Baldauf (supervisors), Jiang Jiehong (external appraiser, School of Art, Birmingham City University).
Abstract
How the line curves considers aesthesis through taijiquan, an internal martial art practised for both defence and nourishment. Taijiquan operates through the interplay of opposing forces — yinyang — as a form and strategy for circulating energy.
Taken as a mode of aesthetic inquiry, taijiquan grounds the research question:
what ways of knowing — and not-knowing — are possible by thinking through moving?
Forming inquiry through taijiquan practice, the research transposes martial strategy to artistic processes. This unfolds through experiments with time-based media and place-making, dialogue and collaboration, somatic movement practices, Chinese calligraphy, and acoustic music. By integrating textual and embodied research, this project traces resonances between the dynamic opposition of yinyang and non-linear, non-dual, situated knowledges that elude the frame of modern-colonial onto-epistemology.
This research project asks how taijiquan as aesthetic inquiry might open possibilities for perceiving, doing, and relating. How might this form a way of thinking beyond philosophy that can hold contradiction and resonance?
Short biography
Serena Lee plays with different aesthetic modalities to consider relations of power, perception, and belonging. Serena’s artistic research often unfolds through embodied practices and collaborative processes, responsive to place, time, and others. Serena holds an MFA from the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam, and an Associate Diploma in Piano Performance from the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto.
The thesis defense will be in English and will take place at Vereinigung bildender Künstlerinnen Österreichs (VBKÖ), 1010 Vienna, and online via Zoom: https://akbild-ac-at.zoom.us/j/69241936716?pwd=empaakkzOU9oWUtqYzVpc0NmM3NmZz09
We are looking forward to welcoming you.