Biography
Michael is an Artist, Researcher, Video Maker, and Arts Manager, with a multidisciplinary background encompassing Dance, Performance Art, Architecture and Design, Video Art, Installation, Documentary, Public Art, Socially Engaged Practice, Community Development, Curating, and Artistic / Creative Directing.
Michael’s art presentations include Tokyo Biennale, Asiatopia (Thailand), Melbourne Festival, the International Symposium on Electronic Art (Sydney, Vancouver, Hong Kong), PUBLIC Festival (Perth), Junction Arts Festival in Tasmania, and many independent events. He has a long history of creative work in Asia, including performing, co-founding, and curating for Melaka Festival in Malaysia, as well as several festivals and artist residencies across Indonesia (Arts Island, Asialink, and the Australia Indonesia Institute).
In performance, Michael trained with dance choreographers, Min Tanaka and Kazuo Ohno in Japan, Ko Murobushi in New York, and Tony Yap in Melbourne (amongst others). He is currently based in Thailand where he was Co-Founder and Artistic Director of Buffalo Field (2017-2019), a performing arts festival in Bangkok that focusses on site-specific performance and community engagement.
In video, Michael has produced projects in the areas of mental health, drug rehabilitation, art activism, architecture, and multicultural arts. This has involved working in challenging areas, such as a refugee camp in the Sahara Desert, a multi-channel video installation exploring Antonio Guadi’s Sagrada Familiar cathedral in Barcelona, and a grassroots Hip hop video in a Johannesburg squatter settlement.
In academia, Michael is currently on faculty in the School of Global Studies at Thammasat University (Bangkok, Thailand). Before SGS, he was at Bangkok University in Digital Media and Design, and prior to that in Architecture and Design at the University of Tasmania (Australia). Before UTAS, he spent two years as a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Senselab at Concordia University in Montreal (Canada), after completing his PhD in the Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (Australia).
Michael is drawn to projects that are collaborative, critical, embodied, and relational, particularly those around social concerns, ecological issues, interdisciplinary innovation, and cross-cultural development. He has experience in all aspects of the creative process, from conception, ideation, and creative writing, to production, post-production and presentation, including directing and managing multidisciplinary teams, grant writing and acquittal, public speaking, promotion, publication, and distribution.