Heather Connelly

 

Statement

I am currently a PhD researcher in the Fine Art department at Loughborough University. My research uses art practice to explore translation, focusing on the process and the transformations that happen in translation, using linguistic translation to explore and amplify the cultural role of translation and its creative potential. I see translation as inherently dialogic and my praxis reflects this in its methodology, production and execution i.e. by interviewing and working with translators and bilingual speakers, creating works or facilitating events with others and devising artworks and opportunities to engage with translation, encouraging interdisciplinary discussion. My practice takes a variety of forms: text and sound works, performances, events and I am in the early stages of working with a computer scientist to develop an interactive computer program, the format and content are often responsive and depend upon the question that I am asking or the context in which I am presenting.

‘art practice has the ability to ‘crystallize other divergent or emergent narratives, or new and different forms of sense’

(Jean Luc Nancy 2006).

One of the key aspects of my PhD is examining how art practice can be used to ask specific questions, how can art practice be presented at and situated within traditional academic conferences e.g. through practice rather than representation or as illustration, and how can it generate new knowledge. To explore this I co-curated a series of events in 2010 and set up the New Research Trajectories network, as part of the AHRC’s Beyond Text programme.

 

Biography

Heather Connelly is an artist/researcher based in Nottingham, who has worked nationally and internationally, she uses a variety of media, text, sound and installation and many projects also involve her as a facilitator. Heather is a part-time lecturer at Loughborough University and has held a number of professional positions including Lead Artist for Groundwork East Midlands – where she devised a Public Art strategy known as Creative Regeneration Programme. She worked with four lead artists to explore different artistic models, practices and approaches, capacity building staff, commissioning work and organizing and writing funding bids for a variety of projects, working with community groups, regeneration organizations, art festivals, international artists and so on. She was a co-founder of New Research Trajectories a post graduate network 2010-11 and series of events that invited PGR’s and experiment with alternative ways to present and share research in progress, which resulted in a day of activities in various locations around Nottingham as part of Sideshow 2010 (Nottingham Fringe festival accompanying British Art Show 7). Essentially the network adopted an artist led approach to research and investigated how practice based research can be used to generate new ways of thinking and be conducive to critical and rigorous debate.

Heather is currently working on a performative work for the second Art and Translation in Reykjavik, Iceland 24-27 May and developing an event with University of Nottingham Translation Centre and co-curating a 2 day symposium/event ‘on dialogue’ at Nottingham contemporary in June 2012.

 

http://www-staff.lboro.ac.uk/~achc/pages/homepage.html

http://voiceofanother.wordpress.com/

http://newresearchtrajectories.net

contact: h.connelly2@lboro.ac.uk