PAULA VAN BEEK | ARTS PROJECTS
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How it wants to be worn: material agency in a devised performance costume process

Case study (2024)
Studies in Costume and Performance, Issue 9.2, Intellect Books.

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Artist Talk (2023)
​PQ Performance Space Exhibition, Veletrzni Palace, Prague

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Why is Barbie the face of Feminism in 2023? 
Article (2023)
Women’s Art Register Bulletin,
issue 73, edited by Triple F+ collective, Melbounre, Australia

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Meet me in the foyer: expanded online performance as social ritual (2022)
Conference presentation
Australasian Association for Theatre, Drama and Performance Studies Conference​ 
​Waipapa Taumata Rau | The University of Auckland
6 - 9 December 2022

watch documentation of performance to illustrate presentation 

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Everything in Extremity (2021)
Zoom theatre performance
created and performed under level 3 lockdown conditions (Wellington, NZ) 
 Short online performance exploring mis/communication in a plague state through the character point of view of Friar Laurence in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.
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Research presentation 
​First person point of view: attention and distraction in a survey of live-streamed theatre audiences
Embracing Change: Virtual PG Symposium
Department of Theatre, Film, Television and Interactive Media, University of York
June 2021


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Research presentation 
​Together apart: how audiences received and reacted to UBU SUX - a live-streamed theatre performance
Thematic analysis of audience  survey and interview data.
Teaching Innovation & Research Session
​Feb 2021

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Symposium Presentation
​The tyranny of proximity: expanding live performance to the digital screen for socially distanced audiences.  Whitireia & WelTec Research Symposium 2020
Rangahau: Kia eke panuku | Vocational Research: Rising to the challenge 
​December 2020 

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Research Project
Expanded performance: blending stage and screen in a performance of a theatrical text
The main objective of this research project is to expand the possibilities of how an audience receives the live performance of a scripted theatrical text to include screen-based strategies. The project adds to the body of work and critical conversations on expanded performance that are emerging due to COVID-19 social distancing measures

​Live and Live-streamed Performance
UBU SUX (2020)

Tapere Nui, Te Auaha - 65 Dixon Street ,Te Aro, Wellington
Live streamed via DaCast and on demand at Melbourne Digital Fringe with additional digital content 
A riotous dark comedy with political undertones, UBU SUX is a new, multimedia adaptation of Alfred Jarry's classic satire Ubu Rex, adapted, repurposed and amplified for right here, right now. 

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Conference Paper
#Visibility as power – feminist identity-based art and the online dynamics of recognition, control and spectacle  as part of "Community Guidelines”: on artistic responses to social media censorship and potentiality
AAANZ Conference – Aesthetics, Politics and Histories: The Social Context of Art, RMIT University Melbourne, Dec 2018
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Publication
​​Selfie Surveillance: Who is watching us while we are watching ourselves, in Agency & Aesthetics, ArtMatter02, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, 2018, pp.142 -155

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MFA Dissertation 
Self-surveillance: Performing the plurality of my feminine experience of self

A dissertation submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of
Master of Fine Art by Research
School of Art, College of Design and Social Context, RMIT University, May 2018

Dissertation available online 

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Conference Paper
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Selfie Feminism: contemporary identity art practices and the complications of #visibility
paper for FRANFEST Symposium: Feminism, Art and Activism 40 years
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia, Sept 2017 

Many young female artists are co-opting the codes of social media creating what is known as ‘selfie feminism’ which claims that posting your own image online is an act of self-empowerment and that creating gender equality can be achieved through online visibility. However, there are a range of other artsits who are seeking to complicate the simplicity of this argument. A new generation of female artists are giving feminism a lot of screen time yet I will contextualise their work within a lineage of feminist artists to assert that the personal is still political.    
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Conference Paper
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Selfie surveillance: who is watching us when we’re watching ourselves? presentation,  Agency & Aesthetics symposium on expanded photography, ​1st April 2017,  Auckland Art Gallery, Aotearoa New Zealand

Contemporary self-identity seems intimately linked to public visibility yet we become entangled with corporate and governmental agendas when we upload images of ourselves online.  From narcissism, to self-empowerment, to selfie as content and selfie as commodity - the readings of selfies are as complex and multidimensional as the faces they present.  My research charts the role that contemporary artists have  in reinforcing and subverting these changing conditions of the selfie and self identity. 

Agency & Aesthetics at Auckland Art Gallery

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Conference Paper
Did the iPhone 4 front facing camera cause the selfie craze? Unpacking the complexities of performing the self, presentation, 
6th International Mobile Creativity and Mobile Innovation Symposium, 30th November 2016,  Swinburne University, Melbourne

My research opens a dialogue between social media, feminism, contemporary art and video performance practices. This presentation covers the groundbreaking practices of a number of female artists who use the self as subject matter, as a lens through which to chart shifts in technological, social and cultural circumstances. 


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Research group
 Thinking Through Practice
Co-coordinator of this bi-monthly peer-peer research opportunity. Tasks include scheduling the presenting artists, assisting with install and de-install, arranging publicity and contributing to the group critiques facilitated by Dr. Domenic Redfern.


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Research Project
The Shape of Things 

an exploration of feminine experience/s of self and re-representation.
‘Shape of Things’ (research presentation), 2015, Research Exchange, RMIT Design Hub

In looking at the shadow body, the shapes we cast and the frames we are constrained into, the project seeks to explode the imposed singular reductive reading of what it means to be a woman in today's society. Embracing montage, collage, multiplicity and simultaneity, the project is dedicated to many outcomes across diverse art forms.
outcomes include:
ACMI workshops for Intermix program - Me, My Selfie & Major Tom
 SIGNAL project for young women - Me, My Selfie & I

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Re:place - Tracing project #3 (2009)
ICU, Castlemaine, VIC
An audience activated installation
Supported by Punctum Live Arts
Artist: Paula van Beek

Made in Wellington, NZ & Melbourne, Australia
Paula van Beek (c) 2024
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