The Magnetic Chamber
The Magnetic Chamber is an ongoing project that seeks to cultivate more intimate relationships with electrical phenomena and its material, environmental and socio-political relations through performance, object-making and spatial encounters. Initiated as the practice component of my PhD research this body of work integrates aesthetic, embodied knowledge and ways of doing. Drawing from a rich archive of electrical performances which span - prehistoric and more-than-human electrics, creation myths, scientific and technological demonstrations, spiritualist and mesmeric healing, digital data, the afterlife of electronic and energy-rich waste - how we perceive, practice, and perform with energy-as-electricity, is power-full.
This iterative body of work asks; what powers power and how might we re-imagine these relationships to form more desirable futures? With electrical phenomena as a through-line the Magnetic Chamber creates opportunities for performers and audience to engage with the topic of energy and sustainability in socially engaged, generative, imaginative, femanist, decolonizing and transformative ways.Using material storytelling and speculative performance the work takes many forms: energy generating prop-objects, installations, digital soundscapes, and a nomadic experience that travel between performance venues and sites of energy production and consumption. As a live, 45minute performance that combines dance-theatre, video projection, and object making the Magnetic Chamber performance, is in itself, the act of making an earthen battery that powers small and delicate effects. As the performers make the power-source a story unfolds of social and ecological interconnection and why thinking, feeling, and desiring kinder, slower, and circular energy relationships is inherently linked to the health and wellbeing of our plant.
Research support from: Dr. Xin Wei and the Arts, Media and Engineering Department, Liz Lerman’s Animating Research at the Bio Design Research Center, and electrical mentorship with Professor Michael Kozicki, all at Arizona State University.
* * The design and materials used in the making of Magnetic Chamber follows a practice of eco-scenography. Uniquely the Magnetic Chamber extends the practice of eco-scenography to include energy. By focusing on energy-as-electricity the performance raises new questions and proposes speculative energy-rich relationships and aesthetics to devise kinder and more sustainable futures. As a performance the Magnetic Chamber has been presented as a solo and duet performance.
The Magnet Chamber: Short video of a performance at Pidgin Palace Art space using their video wall back drop.
The Magnet Chamber: Excerpt of a site-specific performance in the dry river bed of the Santa Cruz River.
The Magnetic Chamber has been presented at: Pidgin Palace, Tucson AZ. 2022; Tucson Museum of Contemporary Art, AZ. 2018; C-Cinco Arts Space, AZ. 2018; CYCLIC performance at BIOSPHERE 2 (Afterparty) 2018; Science Exposed, Arizona State University, AZ. 2019; Convergence Cabaret at ArtSpace, Toronto, BC. 2019; ONCA Art Space, Brighton, UK. 2020 (postponed due to the COVID); International Federation of Theatre Education and Research, Conference, Galway, Ireland. 2020 (postponed due to the COVID); Performance Studies International, Rijeka, Croatia. 2020 (postponed due to the COVID).