Tag: productive antagonisms
Productive antagonisms is an interdisciplinary mode of knowledge exchange and production (Latham and Tan 2016). Itself an artful juxtaposition of concepts and practices and co-created by an artist and a geographer, I have since extended the concept into a mode of learning and teaching, although it has come from prior framings such as ISLANDHOPPING (2002-2005).
My first monograph will be published by Springer Nature/Palgrave Macmillan in Spring 2024. My book introduces ‘Neurofuturism’ as a heuristic praxis for individuals, collectives and institutions to re-imagine a better future, by re-configuring neurodiversity as a mobile, creative leadership strategy.
Love and leadership meets ethics meet counter-mapping meets finding /forming new alliances meets a re-imagination of my new home. FAB PALS is a new project I am leading, commissioned by Social Practice Lab by invitation, and funded by the Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton.
This is a reflection about a 12-point manifesto for the future. Co-authored by three members of the Neurodiversity In/and Creative Research Network, it argues for a decolonised ‘Creative Neurodiversity Studies’ that (re-)centres ‘neurodiasporic subjectivities’ and ‘(in)formal education’, and makes a contribution to epistemic and social justice, creative research and more.
The last PhD I examined — and passed — involved a hike up a hill — during winter — which included performances in-situ (plus sweat, panting and cursing on the part of examiners). The hike was part of a submission which had a written component in the form of a film script, for a doctoral degree undertaken at a School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies of a Russell Group University. If this sound like your cup of bubble tea, get in touch to work with me on your doctoral research at the University of Southampton.
In this op-ed published for the Valentine’s season on the Society for Research into Higher Education (SRHE) blog, I am looking for and locating concepts and actions around a four-letter word – love.
When I was asked to appear on BBC World Service to discuss women and ADHD with Kim Chakanetsa, I said yes. After all, the show’s good enough for Olympian & powerhouse (and ADHD-er) Simone Biles. When asked whom I’d like to chat with, I named my friend Dr. Jane Sedgwick-Müller. Listen in on our lively discussion 2nd October 2023.
I am delighted to have signed a contract with Taylor and Francis in January 2023 as Co-Editor for a new edited collection, A Handbook of Neurodiversity and Creative Research (circa Q1 2025), after being approached by the commissioning editors of Routledge.
I have been invited to co-teach on a course in partnership with Manchester Art Gallery, for second year art and design students. My creative intervention is entitled ‘Go Back to your own Home! Who owns whose culture? On repatriation, cultural ownership, decolonisation of cultural spaces. Should I stay or should I go? What can visitors, museum workers and artists do (together)?’
Since 2018 I have been an invited Visiting Lecturer to teach on two MSc programmes: St Georges University London & Birkbeck: Global Health Humanities MSc, and King’s College London (KCL): Affective Disorder MSc.
In this course, we will look at clips from my commissioned film about a ‘neuro-futuristic’ 2050, How to Thrive in 2050, then break into groups and share thoughts and action for our immediate and longer term future. We will cover tactics to push back the pushback, such as forms of censorship and control. Premiere: 3 May 2022, Castlefield Gallery, Manchester UK.
UPDATE: I have withdrawn due to non-inclusivity of processes
I will be delivering a workshop with Dr Mohammed Rashed entitled ‘From Conditions to Encounters: The Problem of Understanding in Philosophy of Psychiatry’ at Mind, Value and Mental Health: Philosophy and Psychiatry Summer School 2022, St Hilda’s College, University of Oxford.
I am a founding member of socially-engaged international art research network, Social Art Inclusion Lab (SAIL, since 04/2022). SAIL is a legacy of Social Art for EDI (SAFEDI, 02/2021-04/2022), an Arts and Humanities Research Council funded project as part of its pilot EDI Fellowship, which is led by my mentor Visual Anthropologist Professor Amanda Ravetz, and for which I was a Co-Researcher and Mentor for commissioned artists.
Of my involvement in this £1,397,685 NIHR project: ‘Kai visited HMP YOI Isis during the trial to understand the prison environment and what might motivate participants to engage in the trial. Following this, Kai generated images that emphasised choice, control, autonomy, self-care, self-respect, and, at the same time, was mindful of the stigma attached to ADHD.’
What can ‘Neurodivergent Leadership’ look like? A 15-month creative practice-led research project. Get in touch now to support/collaborate!
What would a neurodiversity-led reality look like? My installation and performance at the Attenborough Arts Centre in the exhibition The World is A Work In Progress (curated by Rachel Graves, 25 September 2021 – 16 January 2022) in Leicester, UK proposes that art and neuro-inclusion are key in creating bold visions of how things can be better, and that each of us can play an active part in that process.
Out now: Compliance, Model Minority and Docility: A set of three new fragrances. Apply amply. If you think you have applied enough, bend over backwards to do even more.
This is an op-ed published in Frontiers in Psychology. It is led by Laura Gallo (formerly King’s College London neuroscience MSc student), in collaboration with myself, Dr Vincent Giampietro and Dr Patricia Zunszain (King’s College London).
I’m delighted to join the British Journal of Psychiatry Editorial board. ‘ve been asked to help shape content, especially with the new culture section, and to help commission and identify reviewers and contributors. Contact me if you are keen to get involved!
This article was published in Art, Design & Communication in Higher Education April 2021. It outlines three actions for the supervisor, student and examiner, to introduce a level of anti-racist consciousness in the journey of the Fine Art PhD.
Stimulating article by the marvellously-named artist-researcher Gudrun Filipska on the Running Artfully Network launch.
I welcome new PhD and post-doctoral researchers, and/or PhD external examination opportunities, across diverse subject areas within and beyond the creative arts and humanities
RAN reframes running as an artistic intervention to unpick our time of multiple global crises. At the 26 February Friday launch 10:00-17:00GMT, we presented 22 new insights into climate change, mental health, tech, inequality through running + art, poetry, theatre, sound and more by artists, poets, academics and more from UK and Europe.
I have investigated running as an arts and humanities discourse and artistic research paradigm since 2009. I am described as ‘absolutely central’ and ‘instrumental’ (Whelan 2015) in leading and broadening ‘Running Studies’. My work displays ‘radical interdisciplinarity’ (Latham, 2016). A theatre researcher states that ‘it is the artist, curator, and researcher Kai Syng Tan who has done the most in seeking to develop an interdisciplinary discourse around running art and performance (Filmer 2020).
Extensive fieldwork proved that most dating apps suck. Thus, this is ‘Hinder’, my unintuitive dating app.
Celebrate the Extraordinary (2015) was a practice-led investigation that outlines an inclusive approach to artistic collaboration. It centred on the £4 million opening and closing ceremonies of 8th ASEAN Para Games in 2015, commissioned by the Singapore government.
We Sat On A Mat and Had a Chat and Made Maps! #MagicCarpet (2017-2019)was an award-winning art-psychiatry commission, mentored by Professor of Psychiatry Philip Asherson.
Speed dates are the perfect format for the short-attention spanned, novelty-chasing, risk-desiring, boredom-adverse, intellectually-promiscuous ADHD person. Thus, I curated this speed-dating event at the South London Gallery in June 2018.
This paper runs through the RUN! RUN! RUN! Biennale’s origins, curatorial framework, and its impact.
Since 2019, I have been thinking about ‘Artful Leadership’: thinking, making, organising and being in ways that are artful, agile and atypical. This is about leading within, as well as beyond the arts/cultural realms, by which I refer to being embedded within the socio-political structures, to effect cultural, social and systemic change.
As we move from the immediate crisis towards new ones, we need atypical thinkers, agile doers and creative problem-solvers who thrive in unknowns. A call for a more inclusive and creative socio-political ecosystem.
Watch commissioned Pecha Kucha Life on the RUN! RUN! RUN!, at My Life in Running, Pub Pannuhuone the ANTI Festival of Contemporary Art, Kuopio, Finland 2015 . In…
Seeking collaborators/sponsors: I aim to curate a residency-cum-collaboration programme that will lead to an exhibition asking, ‘What Could A Neurodiversity-led 2050 Look Like?’ I want to matchmake unlikely pairs of neurodiverse artists and designers with scientists and technologists, and choreograph ways for them to work collaboratively towards the co-creation of new pilots and prototypes of apps, objects or experiences.
Productive antagonisms is an interdisciplinary mode of knowledge exchange and production (Latham and Tan 2016). Itself an artful juxtaposition of concepts and practices and co-created by an artist and a geographer, I have since extended the concept into a mode of learning and teaching, although it has come from prior framings such as ISLANDHOPPING (2002-2005).
Desperate times call for desperate, artful measures. Our relationship with time gets distorted when we are desperate. A key response to the pandemic has been the coining of…
03/2020: Keen to explore the messy and magical entanglements between neurodiversity, creativity and research, and all the possibilities and intersections in between? Join the Neurodiversity In/And Creative Research Network, a new international hub.
JOIN NOW! I co-founded and manage the Running Cultures Research Group in 2014 which has been key in helping to widening and advancing the emerging ‘Running Studies as an arts and humanities discourse.
An early proposal of the running-messenger as disruptor and connector. UCL Institute of Advanced Studies.