Lecture / Performance

September 2025

A practice of togethering: Alys Longley’s radical inaugural lecture

For those familiar with scholar Dr Alys Longley, her radically collaborative inaugural lecture, redefining what it means to be an artist-academic, would have come as no surprise.

The newly promoted University of Auckland professor wove together the various strands and mediums of her practice as academic and performance artist – showcasing performance, poetry and pedagogy at her inaugural lecture on 7 September at the Kenneth Myers Centre.

“I’m not a brilliant dancer, I’m not a brilliant actor, I’m not a brilliant visual artist, I’m not a brilliant poet, but I can bring those things together in a way that is my work, and be able to collaborate across those different media.

“It’s a sort of approach that is not very typical, where you’re not a specialist, but in your ability to move across these things you can create a language that is very specific.”

She says taking non-normative approach to different media offers something unique, andhaving collaborators who are experts means “you’re caring for the disciplinary expertise of wherever your field is.”

This ethos of leaning into vulnerability, of privileging process over perfection, was woven throughout the lecture, which featured live and recorded contributions from a constellation of collaborators across Aotearoa and the globe.