The Marvels and Misery of Inflatables

Description

How can choreographers, engineers, visual artists, dance studies scholars, cultural geographers and environmental stakeholders work collaboratively together on inflatable structures to produce something new and innovative?
This workshop-symposium - The Marvels and Misery of Inflatables – part of a British Academy/Leverhulme funded project On Air, was held in Grove House. Designed to create networks and exchange knowledge, it examined experiments with inflatable objects in choreography, visual arts and engineering, and their cross-currents with other societal and artistic trends.

The areas covered included both historical and contemporaneous developments and works, ranging from the Montgolfier balloons, 1960s deployable structures for space explorations (e.g. the NASA Echo I balloon mission), inflatable large-scale museum exhibits, form-shaping plastic materials, wearable latex technology in dance, mylar cushions used in choreographed anti-Neo-Nazi demonstrations, and the environmental impact of plastics among others.

The participants were Prof. Keith Seffen (mechanical engineer, Cambridge University), Bambí Benkö (visual and performance artist working in the Netherlands), Gabriella Engdahl (contemporary choreographer), Prof. Derek McCormack (cultural geographer, Oxford), Adrienne Hart (contemporary choreographer), Dr. José Bico (engineer, ESPCI, Université Sorbonne), Dr. Michael Shaw (visual artist, Loughborough University) and Prof. Annabelle Mooney who advised on environmental impacts.

Period	6 Feb 2025
Event type	Conference
Location	LondonShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International