Kanta Kochhar-Lindgren

Teaching

Learning is a dynamic process that emerges through attention to group process, the kinesthetic dimension, the development of critical and creative thinking, and the critique of culture. The classroom therefore. often acts as an artistic space that generates new social forms, ideas, and more equitable patterns of relationships.

Recent Courses

BIS 322 Creativity Studies
BIS 325 Disability and Human Rights
BIS 393 Principles of Art and Design: Architectural and Environmental Neighborhoods
BIS 450 Performance and Healing
BISIA 213 Intermediate Dance Technique
BISIA 374 Arts Workshop: Devising Stories across Stages / Global Dance
BISIA 483 Advanced Modern Dance and Composition
BCULST 582 Approaches to Performance Based Research
BCULST 502 Cultural Studies as Collaboration

Scholarship/Arts Practices/Campus-Community Initiatives

My critical and artistic work spans a range of topics, including art as a site of research, transnational performance forms, disability issues, the environment (especially water issues), and ways to increase access to theater. As founding Director of the UWB student group, the Empty Suitcase Theater Company, I am working on the 100 Hands Project. Under the aegis of Folded Paper Dance, my professional company, three productions of the Waterworks Cycle (2011-2016)—a multimedia collaborative performance project on water, urban experience, and sustainability—are underway in Seattle, Hong Kong, and Delhi. Other water, dance, and architecture work will be developed at The Wearable Lab at the Academy of Visual Arts (Hong Kong Baptist University) in collaboration with scientists, computer engineers, and digital artists that investigates dance, skin-fabric interfaces, and systems for mapping passage through the Hong Kong cityscape.

As a scholar, I am currently working on arts- and practice-based research; dance and architecture; and Afro-Asian Transnationalisms.

As Director for the Chancellor’s Innovation Forum on Design 2013, I will be facilitating a variety of campus/community initiatives on design, art, and science. The initiatives will culminate in a week of events in February that showcase and further explore these endeavors. 

Selected Publications

Books (In progress)
Performing Blackness: Afro-Asian Theaters and Cultural Alliance

Dramatizing Water: Performance, Science and the Transnational

Ensembles of Innovation: Science, Art, Design, and the Practice of Creativity.

Transnational Avant-Garde Performance Histories (with Iris Tuan)

Published Books
Disability Studies Pedagogy, Editor. Lead book for University of Washington Scholars on Teaching, Seattle: University of Washington Press. (forthcoming)

The Exquisite Corpse: Chance and Collaboration in Surrealism’s Parlor Game. Lead editor (with Davis Schneiderman and Tom Denliger), Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, December 2009.

Hearing Difference: The Third Ear in Experimental, Deaf and Multicultural Theater. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press, 2006.

Selected Articles
Burgett, Bruce, Kanta Kochhar-Lindgren, Ron Krabill, and Elizabeth Thomas; Oct 6, 2011 (online); “The Affirmative Character of Cultural Studies;” in The International Journal for Cultural Studies; print forthcoming.

“Uneasy Alliances: Art as Observation, Site, and Social Innovation” Working Papers in Art and Design. University of Hertfordshire (July 2009).

“Howling: The Exquisite Corpse, Butoh, and the Disarticulation of Trauma” in The

Exquisite Corpse: Chance and Collaboration in Surrealism’s Parlor Game, Eds. Kanta Kochhar-Lindgren, Davis Schneiderman, Tom Denlinger. Omaha: University of Nebraska Press, Fall 2009.

Selected Talks
“Dramatizing Water: Performance, Anthropology, and the Transnational,” National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan, November 22, 2011.

“The Dancing Body: Global Circulations in Musical Theatre,” National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan, November 24, 2011.

“Dramatizing Water: Performance, Anthropology, and the Transnational,” University of Central Tamil Nadu, Tiruvarur, India, Nov. 10, 2011.

Physical Theatre Workshop: Water, University of Central Tamil Nadu, Tiruvarur, India, Nov. 10, 2011.

“Why Cultural Studies?” Uktal University of Culture, Bhubaneswar, India, October 25, 2011.

Artistic Research, Talk and Workshop, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI. April 12, 2011.

Guest Contributor as Theatre Topics Editor “Articles in Progress Workshop,” Mid America Theatre Conference, Minneapolis, MINN, March 3-6, 2011.

“Theatre, Transnationalism, and Cultural Diplomacy,” Plenary on Culture, Bandung 55 at 55, Yogyakarta, Indonesia, Oct 26, 2010.

“Dancing the Sense Body,” “In Spirit: A Full Body Journey,” SNDO, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, May 31, 2009.

“Art as Research: Observation, Site, and Social Innovation,” R2P (Research to Practice), Royal Society of the Arts, London England, October 31, 2008.

“The Eco-Arts in the Sustainability Conversation,” Creating Values for Sustainable Development, International Sustainability Conference, Basel, Switzerland, 21-22 August 2008.

Other Selected Accomplishments
“We Carry the Water: Seattle” Art on the Fly: Seattle International Dance Festival, June 2012

“We Carry the Water: Dance Film,” Inter/National Series: Seattle International Dance Festival, June 2012.

RIACE: International Arts Residency, Raghurajpur. India, September 23- October 28, 2011.

“Techniques for the Possible: Still Points in E-14,” Turin, Italy, Artist Residency and Performance, Sept 2010.

Project Director: “Hong Kong Waterworks: Memory, Water, Architecture,” Hong Kong BYOB Biennale, West Kowloon Cultural Center), 12/09-2/10.

US State Department Cultural Envoy to Karachi, Pakistan; Collaboration with Faisal Malik of Thespianz Theatre, “Water Calligraphy,” outreach sessions to area schools, talks and meetings with NGOs, government officials, and media on the arts, cultural diplomacy and diversity: 9/26/09-10/8/09.

Teaching and Scholarship Exploration Project Award, “Towards Transdisciplinary Arts Practices,” UWB, 2009-2010, ($5000).