Project team
The project includes academics, a UK-based arts organisation, and an artist.
Prof Erica Baffelli
"I am interested in religion in contemporary Japan, with a focus on groups founded from the 1970s onwards, and I have been conducting fieldwork in Japan for over twenty years.
"My recent research projects focused on religion and media; new and minority religions; religion, gender, and violence; and Buddhism and emotions.
"I am co-editor, with Michael Stausberg (University of Bergen) and Alexander Van Der Haven (University of Bergen) of the open-access publication Religious Minorities Online (De Gruyter).
"You can read more about my research and publications."
Dr Jane Caple
"I am interested in intersections between religion, economy, morality, and emotion in contemporary Tibetan communities.
"I have carried out extended fieldwork in northeast Tibet and have been engaging with the Tibetan community in the UK for over twenty years.
"My recent research projects have focused on wealth and virtue, belonging and emotion, religious giving, and the revival and development of Tibetan monasteries."
"You can read more about my research and publications."
Sian Fan - Artist
I am an award-winning interdisciplinary artist working between Essex and London where I am an artist in residence at Somerset House Studios. I have exhibited internationally with institutions including Tate Modern, Mutek, FACT Liverpool, and the V&A, as well as producing work with Channel 4, the BBC and Meta.
My work combines movement, the body and technology to explore embodiment, identity, and human experience in the digital age. Coming from a mixed heritage (Chinese/British) my practice meditates on my tangled identity, exploring what it means to exist in between worlds.
Via my work I delve into my murky relationship with my own heritage, reflecting on diaspora, cultural imposter syndrome and the objectification of Asiatic bodies. I am particularly interested in the uneasy synchronicities between Asian and cyborgian bodies; in popularised depictions of Asiatic bodies in anime and video games; and in the thresholds of human identity where one exists as both and neither at the same time.
By extension I am fascinated by virtual identities, and in how we construct virtual bodies which we cast in hyperspace, extending beyond our physical bodies. I am concerned with the immaterial nature of spiritual and metaphysical identity and with being human in our increasingly digitised and hyperconnected world. Through my work, I seek to discover new ways to coexist with technology.
Future Everything
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Established in Manchester in 1995, Future Everything is an award-winning innovation lab and cultural organisation that has helped shape the emergence of digital culture in Europe.
Through a curated programme of events, art commissions, critical conversations, collaborative projects, and prototyping, FutureEverything stimulates new ways of thinking and is passionate about bringing people together to discover, share and experience new ideas for the future, creating opportunities to question and reflect on the world around us.
You can read more on the the Future Everything website.