Dr. Olu Taiwo

Dr. Olu Taiwo is associate professor in acting and digital research at the
university of Winchester. He is a founding member of the european federation for education and training in street arts (EFETSA). He is also a member of the digital research for the humanities and arts (DRHA). He has a background in fine art, street performance art, african
percussion and various martial arts. He has performed nationally and internationally in
performances and lecture demonstrations promoting concepts surrounding practice as
research, including how practice explores relationships between ‘effort’, and
‘performative actions’. He recently had a retrospective of his work in 2020 as part of
Wiltshire creatives ‘Artist of the week’ series.

He investigates performatively, how as ‘individuals’ we interface with
the increasing digital complexity with regards to our experience in twenty-first century,
through his technique that he has been developing called ‘Urban Butoh’; which, he
developed as part of his performative involvement in Johannes Birringer’s Dap-lab
project, Ukiyo. He is Director of Transcultural studied at the institute ‘the Making of the
Actor’ based in Athens. His publications range from, The Return Beat in Wood (Ed.): The
Virtual Embodied. Routledge (1998). Music, Art and Movement among the Yoruba: in
Harvey (Ed.): Indigenous Religions Cassell (2000), Art as Eudaimonia: Embodied identities
and the Return beat in Susan Broadhurst and Josephine Machon (ed.), Identity,
performance and technology: practices of empowerment, embodiment and technicity.
Palgrave Macmillan (2012), The Return Beat – Interfacing with Our Interface, A Spiritual
Approach to the Golden Triangle: Peter Lang (2021)