September 2021 - Bicycles Create Change

27/09/202125/03/2022

2021 Australian Walking and Cycling Conference

It’s that time of year again!

Woohoo!

The 2021 Australian Walking and Cycling Conference is on! Thursday the 30th of September and Friday the 1st of October – and this year it is all online!

This year’s theme is: Global Lessons, Local Opportunities.

I have been to this conference a number of times in the past and I’ve always enjoyed it.

There is always a good mix of research, community, international and local perspectives, sustainability, urban planning, and new and interesting ideas.

I am definitely going to miss not seeing delegates in person, or doing the side-conference activities and events – they are a real highlight!

But even without the trimmings, I’m excited about this year’s program.

I’m looking forward to connecting with some old conference mates and meeting some new people and hearing what some of ‘the big issues’ are in cycling research.

I’ve been pouring over the abstracts and speakers, checking out the new projects, selecting what sessions to go to, and preparing notes to add to chat discussions during presentations.

Below are a few extra details -see more on the AWCC official website here.

I’ve listed the program at the end of this post for those interested.

For anyone going – I’ll (virtually) see you there!

Conference vision

The simple acts of walking and cycling have the potential to transform the places we live, our economies and how we engage with our environment. The Australian Walking and Cycling conference explores the potential for walking and cycling to not only provide for transport and recreation but solutions to challenges of liveability, health, community building, economic development and sustainability. As one of Australia’s longest-running, best-regarded and most affordable active travel conferences, we bring together practitioners and researchers from Australia and across the world to share their work and engage with conference participants.

The Australian Walking and Cycling Conference aims to send zero waste to landfill.

AWCC

Keynote speakers

I am very excited about the keynotes speakers – especially Meredith. I have been following her work for a while (total researcher fan-girl crush!) and she is kick-ass! Meredith is also a consummate speaker, so I can’t wait to hear her present on her current work. Double Woohoo!

Meredith Glaser is an American urban planner, lecturer, and sustainable mobility researcher, based in the Netherlands since 2010. At the Urban Cycling Institute (University of Amsterdam), her research focuses on public policy innovation, knowledge transfer, and capacity building for accelerated implementation of sustainable transport goals. She is one of the world’s most experienced educators for professionals seeking to learn Dutch transport planning policies and practices. She also manages academic output for several European Commission projects and sits on the advisory committee of the Cycling Research Board. Meredith holds master’s degrees in public health and urban planning from University of California, Berkeley.

Fiona Campbell has been working for the City of Sydney since 2008 and is the Manager Cycling Strategy. She is deeply committed to making Sydney a bike-friendly city and to helping others achieve similar goals. Fiona is currently managing the roll out of 11 new City of Sydney cycleway projects, three of which are permanent designs to upgrade temporary Covid-19 pop-up cycleways. Fiona mostly rides a Danish (Butchers and Bicycles) cargo trike, and on weekends accompanied by two Jack Russells. Fiona will present on “Global lessons, local opportunities”. This title is also the Conference theme.

2021 AWCC Book of Abstracts Download

22/09/202123/12/2021

Kungullanji EOI. Cycle Shiftings: Reconfiguring First Nation presences in Morton Bay Bikeway

This week, I put in an EOI application for Kungullanji’s Summer Program .

Regular readers of this blog know that I have been working with Griffith’s Indigenous Research Unit (IRU) and Kungullanji as an Academic Skills Advisor for the last 4 years. But this is the first time I have put in to be a project mentor.

Recently, Kungullanji announced their Summer Expressions of Interest (EOIs). These are small research projects that will be offered to Griffith’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students for the Summer 2021- 2022 Program. Students get to pick which project they would like to work on. The projects need to be achieved within eight weeks (over Summer before T1 starts). Usually, projects include field work, laboratory work, data analysis and statistics, literature review, case studies, method development, and/or product design.

So, I thought I’d through my hat into the ring this year.

The project I pitched is based on my bikes-for-education PhD research and is unique in that it uses decolonising velo-onto-epistemological (VEO) research practices – an approach that has emerged out of my PhD.

It is an unusual project with experimental methodologies – so it’s a long shot that it will be attractive for an undergrad – but you never know! There might be a brave researcher out willing to try something a little different! We’ll see!

The process of writing up the abstract alone was a really helpful activity in helping me clarify aspects of the methodology and thinking through how to explain what VEO is in clear and simple terms.

Below is what I submitted.

I’ll find out in 6 weeks if a Kungullanji student-researcher chooses my project.

EOI: Project description

Title: Cycle Shiftings: Reconfiguring First Nation presences in Morton Bay Bikeway

Project supervisor: Nina Ginsberg (School of Education & Professional Studies)

Project description:

Bike riding is a ubiquitous part of modern life and offers significant social, economic, environmental and health benefits. However, there is ‘an unbearable whiteness of cycling’ (Hylton, 2017) that is keenly evident. Bicycle trails are not free from the history, culture and politics in which they are built and used.

This project focuses on one section of a popular bikeway located on Narlang lands of the Quandamooka peoples (commonly known as the Morton Bay Bikeway (MBB), Wynnum-Manly, Brisbane). This bike path is the focus of this project which uses emerging mobile ‘riding-with’ research approaches that work to decolonise place. ‘Riding-with’ research approaches are unique as they consider what bicycles can ‘do’ and ‘be’ beyond being just objects of transportation, utility or recreation.

This means paying close attention to what is seen, said, remembered, thought, felt, understood and experienced while bike riding researcher-community members move through particular environments – and in this case specifically, the Moreton Bay Bikeway. This project fits into an exciting and newly established research space that uses embodied and mobile methodologies to destablise current settler-colonial bike path logic and praxis – to look at what might be learned or discovered by cultivating more First Nations experiences as/into bike paths. The underlying aim is to bring forward possibilities for identifying and refiguring what is considered ‘normal’ on bike paths by promoting and celebrating First Nations presences – and that doing so will broaden and bolster similar conversations elsewhere.

The Kungullanji researcher will be encouraged to actively co-contribute to all aspects of the project process. There are opportunities for the researcher to communicate work undertaken (ie via publication, community bike tour, etc) which is highly encouraged, given time and interest. This project would suit a motivated, curious, mature and open-minded researcher who is interested in working with innovative research skills. The supervisor, Nina Ginsberg, will provide guidance at all stages of this project.

Student responsibilities:

Research mobile methodologies and local First Nations presences (around Wynnum-Manly area)
Write short summaries/narratives based on key research themes
Co-develop (with supervisor) an approach to action key research themes
Develop and experiment with riding-with approaches
This project involves being able to go for regular bike rides along Wynnum-Manly foreshore (accessible by train) at a leisurely pace with regular breaks for about 10 kms. Must have a general level of fitness and know how to ride a bike safely. Ideally, the Kungullanji researcher will have their own bike (in good working order) and safety gear (if not, Nina can help arrange this).
Meet with Supervisor at least weekly for bike ride-meetings to discuss findings, progress and next steps.
Opportunity for a co-authored publication (Kungullanji researcher and Supervisor) and/or community bike tour to share findings (if time/interest allows).

The Kungullanji Program

The Kungullanji Research Pathways Program raises aspirations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students by providing an undergraduate research experience, professional development, and connections to the broader Indigenous research community. The idea is to provide an introduction to research and develop valuable skills for students to start their research journey.

The idea is that First Nations undergrads work alongside research staff (who may be an academic staff member, research fellow, postdoctoral fellow or HDR candidate) to gain hands-on research. Supervisors provide regular and ongoing mentorship, guidance, research-specific training, and experience.

This award-winning program is a key part of Griffith University’s strategy to “grow its own” First Peoples higher degree research cohort.

Kungullanji is an Aboriginal word from the Yugambeh language that means ‘to think’ – and this service is specifically for undergraduates.

Kungullanji offers practical research experience and opportunities to develop research skills and confidence not found elsewhere for undergraduates. Students receive a scholarship and are provided with online and in-person research skills training, cultural experience activities, a transdisciplinary art-based workshop, and Peer Mentors provide additional guidance and support.

Postscript: This year there was a remarkably high number of EOIs submitted (the highest ever!) – which speaks to the growing recognition and high caliber of this program! Ultimately, 46 projects were submitted. There were 23 students. My EOI was not selected – another time!

15/09/202123/12/2021

New Materialisms SIG: Thinking about affect work to queer performance

In this session, we explored:

How affect features in queer performance –

and what does gender and sexuality have to do with it?

We were very excited to have guest presenter Assoc. Prof. Alyson Campbell from the School of Theatre, Victorian College of the Arts (University of Melbourne) to lead us on this curious and provocative journey.

And what a fantastic session it was!

A/P Alyson Campbell. Source: Wrecked All Productions

NM SIG Session Abstract

Artist-scholar-makers: Thinking about affect work to queer performance.

My understanding of affect draws on Brian Massumi and cultural theorist Jeremy Gilbert. I’ve built on this general line of thinking to explore more particularly concepts and strategies for queering performance. This all springs from working with Reza Abdoh in Los Angeles in the early 1990s, where I encountered live performance in a way I never had before. Abdoh’s play Bogeyman was dealing with the AIDS pandemic and it has taken me many years to try to find ways to articulate how its queerness was based on something far beyond its content; it was the experience of it, or, in other words, its affect. I’m still trying to understand that interrelationship in my own and others’ work. One strand of this links directly back to Reza in thinking about affect as viral (Viral Dramaturgies, co-edited with Dirk Gindt, 2018) and another strand is as erotohistoriography (Freeman, 2010; e.g. Campbell 2015). As an artist-scholar the whole thing converges in trying to find specificity in language for this (e.g. through musicology/musical thinking, e.g. Campbell 2012) and rehearsal/making strategies.

My question for the session is: What are the gaps in the discourse around affect in performance?

What we did in this session…

… er… how to summarise this session … is very hard… we did so much!

It is so hard to explain all we covered and what stuck for each of us. I loved how Alyson took the time to just think-out-aloud her ideas and explain her motivations, musings, work, and connections – for me, that was so interesting and inspiring (we so rarely have those personal insights as to the process-thinking that goes into academic and performance work!).

I did capture some of what we did, discussed, thought-with, and activated in this session in a few 100-word worldings I wrote from this session. Here are my worldings:

Seek the Affect mechanism.

Freefalling with A/P Alyson Campbell’s Queer Dramaturies. Director process(es) unfolding: pertinent theatre movements, Phenomenology, Massumi’s ‘Affect’, Gormley’s ‘body’s first way of knowing’, Gilbert’s ‘affective specificity’, and Epstein’s ‘shaping affect’. More important than describing affect (as end point), is seeking the mechanism by which it is structured. Not ‘supposed’ to talk about the ‘real’ journey/process/practice. Various maker book think-throughs: Practice-as-research (Practitioners), Affect Explorations (Theory), or Queer Encounters (Personal). More on intersectionality, form and hybridity… maybe queer hybridity? How long does it take for language to move? Pondering practice-theory as contagion or miasma. A juggernaut of multiple threads.

What’s missing in Affect.

With a new artist-scholar friend, we discuss what is missing in Affect. Thoughts disperse and range from uncomfortable school-based moments, to performance making, to the inescapable hard lines of capitalism, to points of deficit in myriad forms. A strong conversational start. Body sameness and what (im)presses. Someone mentions ‘anti-lack-thinking’. I like that idea. I settle into queering beyond what I think and know – and I’m excited by new viral suggestions. We talk of the joys of popping fuchsias and what is learned from migrating bodies. The importance of ‘accepting your in-thereness’ and of (missing) laughter. ‘Not just’ embodied jerks.

Bound up with affect.

I’m leaning into intense inquiries of somatic means and translations. Being led, hand-held, through body-emotion(s) that disregard mental training. I’m ‘bound up’ with affect, constipated by shifting ‘pulling a(part)s’. I’m intrigued by In your face theatre as an attempt to synthesize smaller audiences, funding, and affective capacities – and the aesthetics of what that might mean and do. I see inchoate segregised resistance, near-Punk tendencies, and pre-queering workings (t)here. Not just relying on arguments between characters or choreographies to drive dramatic interest. Activating experiential theatrics and what that actually means when working through ideas, bodies, and hearts.

Grokking 4:48 psychosis.

Moving within/without a binarized sociality bites. Invitations to re(un)see Amelia Carvello’s extraordinary bodies. Being crossed out and knowing the marginalia is where it is at. Meeting a lang-scape for the first time. Considering body-affect as thinking-of-performative ‘affect’, or as queer dramaturgy applied to worlding and how to shape it all. The ‘roomness’ of the room stands out. Grokking 4:48 psychosis. Theories only get you so far, but new meanings and makings lead naturally into methodological spaces, processes, loops, actions, ambiguities, openness and speculations. Uncovering universal ‘truth(s)’ of research-making becomings seasoned with psychological implications and pre-intentional purpose.

New Materialisms SIG: Thinking about affect work to queer performance. Bicycles Create Change.com 11th September 2021. — Image: A/P Alyson Campbell’s Expert Profile. Melbourne Uni.

Presenter Bio

Alyson’s main areas of research and supervision are in gender and queer theory/performance, directing and dramaturgy, phenomenological approaches to performance, social justice and disability in the arts. Alyson’s focus is around the representation of women and the nexus of queer theories and feminism. She is committed to developing modes of practice led/as research throughout her teaching at all levels. Alyson is a freelance director and dramaturg with an astounding 30-year career, and teaching credits that feature the School of Creative Arts, the University of Melbourne, Queen’s University Belfast and Brunel University, London.

For more of Alyson’s background, collaborations and performance work, a list of her publications here and some of her latest work like WreckedALL Prods (2020).

Readings

Gilbert, J. (2004). Signifying Nothing: “Culture”, “Discourse” and the Sociality of Affect. Culture Machine, 4. https://culturemachine.net/deconstruction-is-in-cultural-studies/signifying-nothing/

Freeman, E. (2005) Time binds, or, Erotohistography. Social Text, 23(3-4) pp. 57 – 68. (see attachment).

Campbell, A. (2016) Introduction: Queer Dramaturgies. Queer Dramaturgies, Spinger. pp. 1-26. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9781137411846_1

See also Sexuality Summer School blog post: Theatre and the archives: Directing as erotohistoriograph –

Theatre and the archives: Directing as erotohistoriography

08/09/202130/12/2021

Showcasing The (bike) Mechanics of Adaption

This month is Brisbane Festival month.

So this week, I headed down to Metro Arts to check out a wholly bike-inspired, free art exhibition called The Mechanics of Adaptation.

The exhibition was well laid out and had a variety of materials, forms, and mediums across two galleries. Each work was given sufficient space so viewers could walk around the installations and see them from different angles.

I decided to wander through the show first to get a sense of the artworks. It was interesting to see the different techniques used to fuse, fix and set each of the works together. It felt like these were not super technical pieces, which made them more relatable because it felt like anyone could have a go constructing some of these works.

After my initial look around, I grabbed a handout of the exhibition (see details below) which explained a little more of the context behind the exhibition.

The handout and the necessary artist’s name/title/year posted on the walls next to exhibits were the only pieces of info provided at the exhibition.

When I got home and looked for more online, there were heaps of other interesting info about this project! Why wasn’t this extra info promoted at the exhibition?

For example, this project had been awarded a $35,365 arts fund.

And the passing mention in the exhibition handout about the ‘collaboration’ was actually a vital part of the whole artistic process and overall project.

The collaboration was the part I found most interesting about this whole project, yet at the exhibition, there was very little info about it.

Online, I found a catalog that gave more details about the project (see below).

CLICK HERE: The Mechanics of Adaption Catalog

This catalog outlines the background and details the collaboration with Traction and Sycamore, which I think is where the real art story is at – see here!

Having established artists running a series of workshops with youths at risk (Traction) and young people living with Autism (Sycamore) to teach artistic and technical using bikes is a brilliant idea – and I love that the final works were being exhibited as part of the Brisbane Arts Festival.

As a visitor to this exhibition, I felt this key aspect of the project was missing.

I would have loved to have seen better recognition/focus in the exhibition about the involvement of the youth groups.

Even so, it was awesome to see more bike art being supported and showcased.

If you are in Brisbane and have the interest -consider popping in and checking it out!

More bike projects and art exhibitions like this one, please!

Project Background

Michael Deucamp’s Bicycle Wheel (1931) was one of the first ready-made sculptures which simply placed a bicycle wheel upside down on a stool.

Deucamp’s artwork changed the course of contemporary art by elevating ordinary objects to the status of art. In 2021, after 10 successful years and four million trips, the Brisbane CityCycle program is ending.

With access to decommissioned bicycles provided by JDDecaux, Metro Arts commission and five local artists to produce new work inspired by these now-defunct bicycles.

Over a series of workshops, with students from the Sycamore School (a school of young people living with Autism) and facilitated by Traction (a community organization providing bicycle mechanic training for youths in need), the artists have produced works that expressed their existing practices and inspired by this context and the materials.

This work captures the emerging world of ever-accumulating industrially produced items and the potential for found materials to be incorporated into artworks whilst also inviting a playful attitude into the rarefied context of art galleries.

Today, bicycles also represent the urgency of the need for environmental awareness and sustainability.

Within this context, the artists’ use of the decommission City Cycle bicycles reflects the opportunity for artistic experimentation that connects histories of art to environmental sustainability.

List of works

Window Gallery

Alisha Manning Bike Spin (HD video, 3 mins 2021)

Gallery One

(Clockwise from entrance left)

Susan Hawkins Joining Multiples (CityCyle wheel rims and handlebars, dimensions variable 2021)

Sarah Poulgrain A Set of New Skills: Aluminum Casting (handlebar and bike seat posts, plaster, towel and chain from studio, dimensions variable, 2021)

Ross Manning Orange Reflector Feild (CityCycle reflectors, 185cm x 125cm, 2021). Ross Manning is representing Miliani Gallery, Brisbane.

Alisha Manning Bike Pull (2-channel HD video, 9mins 42 sec, 2021).

Gallery Two

Kinly Grey Wheel (CityCycle LED modules and wheel rim, haze, dimension variable, 2021).

All images (unless otherwise attributed) and parts of this text are sourced from Metro Arts Brisbane.

01/09/202109/12/2021

Bespoke City Nostalgia

As we move into holiday mode, my thoughts turn to long, lazy afternoons enjoying the rich, inviting, creativity of a thriving bike community. I was nostalgic for a local event something along the lines of Bespoke City. Bespoke City was a super special, one-night-only art and design event held in Sydney some years back. A wonderful reminder of what can be achieved when creative minds come together. For those who missed it, this post explains the event. Here’s to hoping for more bespoke events like this! Enjoy. NG.

The Bespoke City event was put on to celebrate a new generation of designers, makers, technologists and innovators who had teamed up with artists to re-imagine Sydney’s streets from the perspective of the cyclist.

Brilliant! There should be more city events like this!

The Bespoke City festival included a series of bike-inspired installations, projections, interactive artworks, unique sculptures, videos, kinetic artworks, demonstrations, and stalls. Curated by Laura Fisher and Sabrina Sokalik, Bespoke City invited audiences to reimagine Sydney’s urban environment.

It was held in a new community space in the heart of Oxford Street. This was the first time the event had ‘spilled out into the streets’ from the UNSW Art & Design Courtyard and Galleries.

Bicycles were central to all the artworks.

Bikes were used to generate light, colour, sound and energy, while other artworks used them as a metaphor for the city itself – reminding us that urban spaces can be deconstructed and remade and that we are all implicated in the politics of public space.

A key aim of the event was to spotlight the bicycle as a humble but brilliant piece of technology, and to share a vision of the city as open to being hacked, remapped and remade.

Bespoke City was part of UNSW Galleries’ First Fridays program, in which the Galleries stayed open late on the first Friday of each month to host lively events engaging in contemporary art and culture.

What a great idea! More, please!

Laura Fisher said Bespoke City appealed to everyone: “This is one for the makers, the pedalers and the whole family.”

Some of the more than 20 Bespoke City artworks, workshops and installations, included:

Pedal powered light mural – Climb on and peel back the layers of the city. See Sydney in flux as your pedalling efforts produce variations in light, colour and space. Artists: Jonathon Bolitho, Jeong Greaves, Jobe Williams, Mackenzie Nix.
Autonomous painting machine – A robot-painter that tracks human movements to create curious images, prompting viewers to think about how machine intelligence is influencing our lives. Artist: Jeffrey Wood
Bicycles that make music – Create a slow groove or some fast electronic beats as you collaborate with other riders to fill the campus with a unique and evolving sound piece. Artists: Milkcrate Events.
Microbiology in the urban wild – Examine the city at the molecular level using a bike-powered laboratory created by the first Citizen Scientist molecular biology lab. Artists: BioFoundry
A virtual ride from Paddington to Rozelle – ‘Veloscape’ is an immersive video work in which your pedalling takes you on a traverse of the city. Artists: Volker Kuchelmeister and Laura Fisher
Giant data visualisation – Watch the ebb and flow of rider movements around Sydney, with a specially commissioned work inspired by the City’s cycling data. Artist: Hanley Weng & Xavier Ho.

There were also lots of other things to do, like get a free bicycle tune-up, join the guerrilla knitters, make some custom reflective gear or get some food from one of the Cargo Bike businesses and pop up stalls.

Yes – a wonderful event that ticks so many boxes: artistic, fun, high community engagement, questioning urban design and mobility, bike-focused, collaborative, free, public event…(*sigh*).

I’d love to see more events like this during the holidays.

Ti wouldn’t be too much of a stretch given that most major cities already have some kind of public, night-time bike events like Ride the Night Brisbane or some kind of innovative bike infrastructure like the Starry Night Bike Path.

So let’s showcase more art and design collaborative artworks on two wheels!

This post uses content originally posted by Laura Fisher for UNSW Newsroom and UNSW Galleries.