Lila Moore, PhD
Lecturer
Email: lila.moore@aleftrust.org
Website: cyberneticinstitute.com
Biography
Dr Lila Moore holds a practice-based PhD in Dance on Screen from Middlesex University (2001), UK, in the context of experimental film, dance, modern and contemporary art, multimedia and cyber performance with special reference to myth, ritual, women’s spirituality and movement therapy through imaginal images and archetypes. The PhD was based on her M.Phil in film/video and dance (1997) and MA in Independent Film and Video (1989) from Central Saint Martins in London. Her Postdoc at the Planetary Collegium of Plymouth University (2015) entitled The Cybernetic Futures Institute, explored networked-digital-interactive forms of performance and narrative, fields of noetic and compassionate consciousness, and the innovative formulation and intersection of advanced technologies, spirituality and technoetic aesthetics to counteract the dominant narrative of violence.
Lila Moore is a lecturer and dissertation supervisor at the Alef Trust. She teaches on the Transpersonal Psychology Module as well as teaching the Option course Spirituality and the Imaginal as part of the Spiritual Psychology Module. She was a lecturer at the Department for the Study of Mysticism and Spirituality at Zefat Academic College until its closure (2013-2022) and received the Outstanding Lecturer Award in 2022 in recognition of her dedicated and excellent work.
Dr Moore co-chairs the Spirituality and the Arts Special Interest Group of the International Network for the Study of Spirituality. She is an editorial board member of both S/he – An International Journal of Goddess Studies and the Alef Trust’s Consciousness, Spirituality & Transpersonal Psychology journal. She regularly presents papers in academic conferences, produces academic writings, and serves as a reviewer for EVA London Conferences. As an international artist and theorist, Lila Moore’s artworks and theoretical texts are archived by SIGGRAPH and ADA-Archive of Digital Art. She exhibits in juried and curated exhibitions as well as curates online exhibitions via Cybernetic Futures.
Research interests
Lila’s research has evolved via three main interrelated trajectories: The first path continues her interest in the fusion of different art forms and the evolution of hybrid arts, such as screen-dance, that could give rise to innovative depictions and narratives of the imaginal and spiritual realms, gender’s perspectives, and the dynamics of ritual, magic and myth. This research is exemplified by Lila’s artist’s monograph Screen-dance as rite of passage and a monograph project on Maya Deren.
The second path encompasses ongoing explorations of consciousness as field/s and the notions of learning fields, networked-rites of compassion, noetic-fields weaving, and choreia-nous, the dance of the body and mind, in cyber-performance, mixed and extended reality, utilising technoetic formulations. These ideas are articulated in her essay The Shaman of Cybernetic Futures: Art, Ritual and Transcendence in Fields of the Networked Mind. Presently, techno-spiritual-mystical constellations are informed by Lila’s family’s heritage involving leaders of the pan-anarchy movement; a utopian philosophy and cosmic language of technological invention, aimed at liberating the oppressed.
The third path unfolds research and writings on Spiritual Cinema and the Spiritual in Art in the broader context of spiritual and occult trends, contemporary spirituality, feminist theory, and Jungian and Transpersonal psychology.
Key publications
Moore, L. (2022). Space-age goddess: The overview effect as a feminine archetype, evolving myth and participatory transpersonal practice. S/HE: An International Journal of Goddess Studies, 1(2), 96-129. https://sheijgs.space/?page_id=1094
Moore, L. (2018). The shaman of cybernetic futures: art, ritual and transcendence in fields of the networked mind. Cybernetics & Human Knowing, 25(2-3), 119-141.
Moore, L. (2017). Techno-spiritual horizons: Compassionate networked art forms and noetic fields of cyborg body and consciousness. Technoetic Arts, 15(3), 325-339. https://doi.org/10.1386/tear.15.3.325_1
Moore, L. (2015). Fields of networked mind: Ritual consciousness and the factor of communitas in networked rites of compassion. Technoetic Arts, 13(3), 331-339. https://doi.org/10.1386/tear.13.3.331_1
