Activating the Vā: Performance, Academia and the Sublime — Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania (ASAO) 2023 Distinguished Lecture

Abstract

The concept of vā in various Oceanic cultures came into academic discourse among Pacific Islands scholars in the mid‐1990s, but it was not until covid became a global pandemic and an academic conference focusing solely on the vā took place in 2021 that the concept became a focus of my interest. This is partly because certain rules of behavior such as ‘social distancing’ drew attention to the importance of the ‘space between’ individuals as well as the space between humans and the natural world. What exactly does vā mean and why is it so important to understand its potential? How does the concept of vā apply to culture in relation to performance, specifically the genre of dance? What about academic writing, which does not exist in a three‐dimensional space? As a creative artist and scholar, I am interested in how to activate the vā in both arenas so that the quality of the outcome that results from this activation is elevated to the level of the sublime.