Cross-Border Practices
Dr. Les Joynes
Department of International and Transcultural Education, Teachers College Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Award, School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
Building Cross Border Practices
Dr. Les Joynes is a contemporary artist and research scholar on the future of arts and education, He is professor of record for Modern and Contemporary Art Histories and Interdisciplinary practices at Renmin University, Beijing and a Research Scholar Department of International and Transcultural Education at Teachers College, Columbia University in New York.
In addition to being a Monbukagakusho Scholar in Japan, he was TrAIN Fellow at the University of the Arts London Research Center on Transnational Art, Identity and Nation, recipient of Fulbright Awards for Mongolia, China, and India and is a ZERO1 Art and Technology Artist and recipient and led US Department of State sponsored research on arts exchange and collaboration in Central Asia.
Exploring Contemporary Art and Site
The 21st century art studio is no longer tethered to fixed spaces. Geographically dispersed practices engage creativity in new ways that are now informing new forms of academic practice.
A research scholar in the Dr. Les Joynes introduces FormLAB, a nomadic learning environment that re-sites the studio, workshop, and learning environment into museums, universities and public spaces around the world. Founded at Goldsmiths, London in 1997, FormLAB scaffolds collaborative learning spaces to explore materials, processes, practices as well as the identities and cultures in which they are sited. Students and collaborators explore not only new materials and processes but also notions of identity and culture. As an interdisciplinary project FormLAB also mines the interdisciplinary resources available in academia and beyond.
Pedagogy does not come from a book but is an evolving set of practices. Exploring media and technologies to examine art processes, FormLAB occupies museums and public spaces transforming them into experimental laboratories. Through collaboration, improvisation and interdisciplinary experimentation, we experience intense proximities (Enwezor 2012) between ourselves and the environments we encounter.
A an Art and Technology artist, Dr. Joynes also explores interconnectivity through micro-control systems that that produce sound, audience-interactive kinetic movement that enable spectators to engage with a geographically dispersed exhibition within city neighborhoods. He also explores experimental site-specific performance, re-purposing old technologies, examining indigenous technologies and ritual and to examine binary-bias in pedagogy through the interface of traditional and contemporary procedures.
Interfacing Art, Technology and Site
Today, the advancement of globalization, communication and cultural exchange has prompted contemporary artists to search for new and significant ways of making art in an effort to create communities and initiate intercultural dialogue. Exploring technology, artists initiate cross-disciplinary experimental laboratories “spaces that can produce new relationships between spectator and artwork” as well as illustrating how artists now work in the broader networks of connected cities and virtual dimensions.
Artists invent new signs and connect to broader global networks. They explore the unfamiliar, leaving a wake of new signs and knowledge that are consumed by spectators. Nicolas Bourriaud refers to the artist “…as semionaut, an inventor of trajectories, through signs.” As creators of new signs, artists envision new forms of visual culture.
They can encounter the unexpected in technology resulting in novel intuitive pathways and experiments-based outcomes. Artists engage the unfamiliar; and, as Carol Becker writes: “…flock to the ambiguities and marginalities that cause others to flee.”
Artist experimentation with technology can be spontaneous, engaging, playful and educational. Akin to pure research, FormLAB operates as a space for ongoing process, less obsessed with outcomes, and more focused on discovery and wonder.
With the advent of practice-led doctoral research programs artists increasingly interface their practices across numerous disciplines (i.e. sociology, cultural studies, humanities, psychology, critical theory, anthropology, and education). Utilizing interdisciplinary inquiry to drive innovation, artists explore gaps between disciplines initiating new forms of dialogue through experiment.
Ever evolving, new media technology presents us with novel forms of interface within our environments. While some technologies are new, others may be thousands of years old embedded within culture. In London in the 1990s I explored new and old technologies transforming studios into make-shift laboratories to investigate creative practice and discover how art can interface with technologies and a space to explore systems and technologies embedded within other cultures.
Nature of Research
Artistic research explores new ways of performing, new ways of seeing (darsan) and new ways of looking (drishti) through which we identify (cognate) new forms (rupa), construct new names or terms (nama) and scaffold new knowledge. This research examines the cultivation of “darsan” as a way forward for me to perceive India’s rich visual cultures.
Fieldwork
I work with local artists in collaborative performances using shared-learning methodologies to experiment with and explore social structures, sites and the performative body (including rasa expressions of compassion, wonder, humor, peace, and heroism).
Exploring New Modalities of Site Specific-Reactivity
I created FormLAB in 1997 as a nomadic studio-laboratory that could travel overseas to not only observe but also reinvent art-making processes. With FormLAB we examined the ontogenesis of a work of art: its evolution from raw materials, to a work-in-process, and finally to finished work (and sometimes devolving back again to raw materials). From 2008-2017 FormLAB has created projects in Germany, Singapore, South Korea, France, Brazil, Russia, Mongolia and China. Today it is exploring disruption: not only in interrupting art processes but reinventing how we perceive of a museum.
Producing FormLaboratory, we worked with a variety of artists and local inhabitants in different geographic settings. We drew inspiration from French Surrealist André Breton’s (1889-1966) Cadavre Exquis games and how these game presented the opportunity to destabilize art-making processes.
By presenting “live” art or art-making as a process (observable within performance spaces such as a museum), we sought to interrupt the spectators’ passive gaze. We presented them with spontaneity and movement encouraging them to experience works of art as a dynamic series of processes with multiple outcomes that continually change over the duration of the exhibition. The radical nature of shared art-making can lead to unexpected discoveries that are unique to local-specific contexts, bringing about new ways of engaging with art, sites and performances. This has the potential to disrupt the static visual economies and narratives often reinforced by museums, art fairs and commercial galleries.
Shared processes with others and utilizing found objects that have been collected over time offers a structure where we can explore the spaces between the Self and the Other. FormLab becomes a lens into cultural traditions through the creation of dynamic interdisciplinary structures (shared art-making). It appropriates found-objects, sound, music, oral tradition, performance, and emergent technologies and reinterprets them anew. Shared processes with local inhabitants of an unfamiliar culture creates an othering of self and a resulting parapraxis through the invocation of a subconscious. Michel Foucault writes of an “…unveiling of the non-conscious.” It is this “othering of the self” that evokes a fecund unfamiliar territory in creative practice.
“Through collaboration, improvisation and interdisciplinary experimentation, we can encounter “intense proximities” (Enwezor 2012) between ourselves, our environments and our conceptions of culture.”
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About:
A contemporary artist and artistic research scholar Les serves on the Editorial Board for ProjectAnywhere, a peer-reviewed journal on artistic research at the University of Melbourne and Parsons School of Art, New York and was 2015 TrAIN Research Fellow at the Centre for Transnational Art, Identity and Nation at University of the Arts London.
Educated in the US, UK and Japan he has a BA Fine Art from Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London; MA Fine Art from Goldsmiths, London; MA from Musashino Art University, Tokyo and M.Sc from Boston University and the Vrije Universiteit Brussels Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences. Exploring collaborative models in artistic research, he completed his PhD in Fine Art from the Faculty of Art, Environment and Technology, Leeds Metropolitan University, UK and Post-Doctorate in Fine Art from the School of Communications and Arts, University of São Paulo, Brazil. In New York he researches contemporary visual cultures in the Department of Art History at Columbia University in New York and is visiting faculty at Renmin University, Beijing.
Educated in the US, UK and Japan he is a graduate of Boston University, Central Saint Martins College of Art, Goldsmiths, London; and Musashino Art University, Tokyo;
He completed his doctoral research at the School of Contemporary Art and Graphic Design, Faculty of Art, Environment and Technology, Leeds Metropolitan University, UK; and Post-Doctorate exploring indigenous creative practices at the School of Art and Communications at University of São Paulo, Brazil. Les received Fulbright Awards for China and Mongolia.
He has contributed art criticism to Art in America, Flash Art and Springer. Recent publications include reviews and contributions to Reclaiming Artists Research, Journal for Artistic Research, Basel New Institutional Models: China’s Cultural Landscape by Mid-Century, Long Museum, China (
2018); Going Beyond: Art as Adventure (2018), Cambridge Scholars, UK
Anywhere v.1.(2015), University of Melbourne and New York: Parsons School of Art, New York; Art and Research at the Outermost Limits of Site Specificity, Newcastle, Australia (
2011) and the Journal for Visual Culture [journal], Irvine: University of California, Irvine.
Research Background
Academic Focus
Dr. Joynes focuses on the art school of the future. He is trained in advanced curriculum design for MFA and PhD programs in the arts and specializes in site-specific and interdisciplinary art. His PhD and Post-Doctorate explored new models for cross-cultural collaborative practices and artistic research.
He also researches contemporary art workshops and curated thematic discussion spaces in post-graduate education. A specialist on Asian cultures he was US Department of State sponsored fellow conducting the world’s first research on Mongolian arts in higher education.
Curricula and Syllabi
Emerging the New Art School in Tactical Programs that interface the artist [curriculum]
Models for Developing a Contemporary Program and School in Central Asia [curriculum]
Evolving Boundaries: Environmental Art from the 1960s to present [syllabus]
Engaged Critique in Contemporary art: expanded concepts of installation [tutorial/critique]
Supervision and mentorship on MFA and PhD programs in Fine Art [workshop and seminar].
Border Strategies and the New Global: Contemporary art referencing border, identity and the new territorialization of public spaces [workshop and panel]
Doctoral Supervision in practice-based research [syllabus]
Searching for alternatives to the Modern, Contemporary and the
Post-Post Modern: Relocating creative practice. [syllabus]
Engaging the contemporary artist with professional practices for long term critical development [workshop and panel]
Chinese contemporary art: Parallel critical developments between the East and West from Modernism to Contemporary [syllabus]
Parallels in performance art between the United States and Japan 1960-present [syllabus]
Conferences
ISEA International Symposium of Electronic Art, Asia Culture Center, Gwangju, Korea
Session-Chair, ProjectAnywhere Conference, Parson School of Art, New School, New York. (2018)
Plenary Keynote Speaker on PhD research, School of Art, Peking UNiversity, Beijing (2018)
Artist-centric practices within the museum, Museum2050, Long Museum, Shanghai (2018)
Co-Chair, Young Researcher Conference, Mongolia (2016)
International Committee, College Art Association conference (2015-present)
Japan Startup NYC, Microsoft, New York (2016)
Presidents Forum on Higher Education, Teachers College, Columbia University, New York (2016)
Keynote Speaker, Young Researcher Conference Mongolia,
National University of Education and the American Center for Mongolian Studies (2015)
Royal Geographical Society Conference, London (2013)
Editorial Committee, ProjectAnywhere Conference, Parsons/ New School, New York (2015)
Panelist, Artists’ Workspaces: Portability, Contingency, Virtuality,
College Art Association conference, Chicago (2014)
Panelist Going Beyond: Art as Adventure (CAA, Washington, DC) (2018)
European League of Institutes in the Arts (ELIA) conferences, Seoul (2012) and Vienna (2013).
Selected Publications, Studies and Research
Diversity, Equity and Creative Practices in South Asia (2022) Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India
Reclaiming Artists Research (journal review, 2020), Journal for Artistic Research, Basel
Joynes, L. (2019) “The Artist-centric model in museums” in Looking to New Institutional Models: China’s Cultural Landscape by Mid-Century, Ching, N and Tanner, L, (eds), Long Museum, Shanghai
Joynes, L et al (2019). Emerging models for teaching, New York: Critical Practices
Joynes, L. (2019).“The Artist as Explorer,” in Going Beyond: Art as Adventure (2018) O’Neill et al (eds.), Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars.
Joynes (2019) Interfacing Technology with Site (2019) ISEA International Symposium of Electronic Art, Korea
Joynes, L and Vu, T et al (2018). DrawnOver: Contemporary Drawing, Vojvodina, Serbia: Museum of Contemporary Art [catalogue].
Joynes, L. (2016). “The Artist Explorer: FormLaboratory: Geographically Dispersed Performance in Brazil (2012-2013) and Mongolia (2014)” Sao Paulo, Brazil: Escola de Comunicações e Artes, Universidade de São Paulo [post-doctoral thesis].
Joynes, L (2015). “FormLAB” in Anywhere v.1.(2015). Lowry, S. and Douglas, S. (eds.),Melbourne, Australia: University of Melbourne and New York: Parsons School of Art, Media and Technology, Parsons, New School for Design, New York.
Joynes, L. (2015) “The Artist as Explorer,” Washington D.C.: College Arts AssociationConference
Joynes, L and Vu, T. (2015) Les Joynes and Thomas Vu in Interview” in Draw: Artists from China at Inside Out Art Museum, New York: LeRoy Neiman Foundation [catalogue].
Joynes, L (2014). “FormLaboratory” in Art and Research at the Outermost Limits of Site Specificity (2014) Lowry, S and Douglas, S. (eds.). Newcastle, Australia: Univ. of Newcastle. Joynes, L. (2014).“Nomadic and Geographically Dispersed Practice,” Chicago: College Arts
New Institutional Models: China’s Cultural Landscape by Mid-Century, Long Museum, China (2018)
Going Beyond: Art as Adventure, O’Neill, R et al (eds), Cambridge Scholars, UK (2018)
Joynes et al Anywhere v.1.(2015), University of Melbourne and New York: Parsons School of Art (2015)
Joynes and Vu, Inside Out Art Museum, New York: LeRoy Neiman Foundation [catalogue]. (2015)
Art and Research at the Outermost Limits of Site Specificity, Newcastle, Australia (2014)
Joynes, L. and Basu, S (2011). “The Invisible and the Transvisible in contemporary art in Singapore,” in Octopus, Journal for Visual Culture. Irvine: University of California, Irvine
Joynes (2008)" Multi-spatial Performance: at Bauhaus-Dessau, November 2008: Record Dances, Bühnenstudios der Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau [Internet].
Joynes et al, Taking the LEED: Examining the costs and benefits of environmental efficiencies, New York (2007)
Joynes et al (2004) “Intelligence, technologies and applications to genomics” Legislation of genetic testing in the US and Iceland: Legislative Implications and strategies, Tokyo, Japan
Joynes et al Ethics and Genetic population testing - engineering best practices in the US and Iceland (2004)
Joynes et al Bringing Intelligence to the technological interface between technology and interface in Japan (2003)
Joynes et al Clinical research development in human aging sciences, Tokyo, Japan (2003)
Joynes et al, The Human Genome: Areas of Light and Shadow (E.Kon et al, Shokabo Publishing, Tokyo 2001)
Joynes, L. (1999). “Some Say They Did: Some Say They Didn’t, Contemporary Art of Yoshitomo Nara at Ginza Art Space” New York: Art in America.
Joynes, L. (1998).“The New Pathetic. Contemporary British art in the 1990s,”Vienna: Springer.
Joynes, L. (1998) Scientific Journal Editing, Tohoku University, Japan.
Joynes, L, and Shani, A (1990)” Managing The Technology Transfer Process: The Parallel Learning Mechanism, Seoul: Dankook University Press.
The New Pathetic: Contemporary Art in London, Springer [magazine], Hamburg, Germany (1997)
Joynes et al (1991) “Emerging materials applications in sound: use of polycarbonates and semiconductors for digital audio” Brussels, Belgium,
Joynes et al (1991) “Resourcing Tetra-butyl hydro-peroxide for radical polymerization Initiators, Brussels.
Joynes and Shani (1990)” Managing The Technology Transfer Process: The Parallel Learning Mechanism, Seoul, Korea: Dankook University Press.
Joynes et al (1990) Competitive Strategies in Fiber-optic technologies, Brussels.
Joynes et al(1990) ”Radiative mineral spectrometry and refraction technologies,” Brussels.
Joynes et al(1989) “Petroleum and derivatives competitive Analysis:Europe,” Brussels.
Joynes et al .(1989) Introducing eco-recyclables into automobile manufacturing,” Brussels.
Joynes, (1987) “Survey on Advanced Management Post-Graduate Education Programs, Boston University.
Juries and Editorial Boards
CEC ArtsLink Jury Reviewer for Artists, New York (2021)
CEC ArtsLink Jury Reviewer for Art Managers, Curators, New York (2021)
Editorial Board Member for ProjectAnywhere [journal] University of Melbourne, Australia and Parsons School of Art, New York (2015-present)
Art and Anthropology Committee, Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain, London (2020-present)
Nordic Artist Center, Selection Committee, Norway (2008)
Harlem Arts Alliance Grant Selection Jury, New York (2010)
Awards
2021 Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Award (US Department of State)
2020 US Department of State, Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs Grant for Colombia
2019 US Department of State, American Arts Incubator ZERO1: Art and Technology Artist
2017 Fulbright Hays US Public Diplomacy Mission China Award
2017 CEC ArtsLink Foundation Grant, St. Petersburg, Russia
2017 Taiwan Ministry of Education (MOE) Language Scholar National Cheng Kung University
2017 Renmin University of China Merit Award for Teaching
2016 Wheatley Foundation Fellow, Birmingham City University, UK
2016 US Department of State Field Research Fellow, American Center for Mongolian Studies
2015 Fellow ,University of the Arts London Research Center on Transnational Art, Identity and Nation
2014 Fulbright Hays US Public Diplomacy Award for Mongolia
2014 CEC ArtsLink Foundation Grant for Mongolia
2009 Queenstown Council, Singapore Citation Award, Singapore
2009 Edwin Austin Abbey Fellowship, National Design Museum, New York
2009 Bauhaus Foundation Fellow, Dessau, Germany
2008 The Nordic Artists Center Fellowship, Norway
2001 Musashino Art University Selection Award
2001 Japanese Ministry of Education and Culture Scholar (Monbusho) (1998-2001)
1998 Japanese Ministry of Education and Culture Japanese Language Scholar (1997-1998)
1996 Academic Honours, Central Saint Martins College of Art, London
1995 Erasmus Scholarship, Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-arts, Paris
1995 King Sturge Award for Sculpture, London
Teaching Graduate (PhD)
2020-pres PhD Fine Art Tutorials and Coaching, Victorian School of the Arts, University of Melbourne, Australia
2015 PhD Masterclass on Doctoral Research and Fieldwork, Chelsea College of Art and Design, University of the Arts London, UK
Teaching Graduate (MA, MFA)
Beyond Pedagogy (2021)- a Workshop for future university art educators, School of Arts and Aesthetics Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
Academic Careers in the Arts - Individual Pathways (upcoming)
Strategies for Artmaking in Pandemic. (2020-present) Coaching to MFA students (Individual teaching), Columbia University School of the Arts
Strategies for Global Leaders: Coaching to MBAs and EMBA students (Individual teaching) (2020-present)
Entrepreneurship in the Arts: Creating Museums of the Future (seminar) (2018), Peking University Institute for Cultural Industries, Beijing
Collaboration in Practice, China Inside Out Art Museum, students from China. Academy of Fine Arts (2018) Fulbright US Public Diplomacy Award
American Modern and Contemporary Art History (undergraduate and graduate) Professor of Record 2013-present). Renmin University of China, Beijing. Professor of Record (2013-present)
Experimental Art and New Media (undergraduate and graduate). (Professor of Record, 2018-present) Renmin University of China, Beijing
RA Studio Tutorials, Royal Academy of Art, London, UK (2015)
MA Fine Art Studio Tutorials, Chelsea College of Art and Design, University of the Arts London (2015)
MA Fine Art Studio Tutorials, University of Lincoln, Lincoln, UK (2015)
MA Fine Art Studio Tutorials, University of Coventry, Coventry, UK (2015)
MA Tutorials, Leeds Metropolitan University, Leeds, UK (2011-2012)
MFA Studio Tutorials, Columbia University School of the Arts (2008-2009)
Artist Residencies
Inside Out Art Museum, Beijing (2018)
CEC-Arts Link, St. Petersburg, Russia (2017)
Fundação Armando Alvares Penteado, São Paulo, Brazil (ResArtis, 2013)
Seoul Foundation for Art and Culture, Seoul, Korea (ResArtis, 2012)
FormLAB, Brazilian Museum of Sculpture (2012)
Treignac Projet, France (2010)
Toosneger Foundation-Dordrecht Printmaking and Painting Residency, Holland (2008)
Abbey Fellowship in Public Art, National Academy Museum, New York (2009)
Nordic Artists Center (NKD), Dalsasen, Norway (ResArtis, 2008)
Nagasawa Woodblock Printmaking Fellowship, Awaji, Japan (2006)
Poznan Summer Academy Residency, Poznan, Poland (1993 and 1994)