The Magnetic Chamber
The Magnetic Chamber is an ongoing project that seeks to re-enchant electricity and its material, environmental and socio-political relations through performance and object making. Combining dance-theatre, video projection and object making the performance itself is 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 new energy relationships is powerful.
Drawing from a rich history of electrical performance including, scientific lectures, populist demonstrations, technologies of illusion, mesmerist rituals, and communication technologies, the 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 new, magical, and enchanting ways.
Produced by Sugar Beast Circus
* * 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 Performance
(Duet): Part 1
Part 2
Coalescing around ideas of electricity and ritual The Magnetic Chamber is an ongoing Practices-as-research inquiry that draws lines of connection between energy consumption, material relationships, and embodied performance. Iterations of the Magnetic Chamber function as, what I call, Mesmeric Interventions, acts of healing the Earth and one another through the electromagnetic either. Using material storytelling and speculative performance the work takes many forms: prop-object installations, digital soundscapes, and a nomadic experience that travel between performance venues and sites of energy production and consumption. The work asks; what powers our electrical obsessions and how might we re-imagine energy-rich relationships to make more desirable futures? Drawing from a rich archive of electrical performances which span prehistoric and more-than-human electrics, creation myths, scientific demonstrations, and mesmeric healing, to digital data and the afterlife of electronic and energy-rich waste, how we perceive, practice, and perform with energy-as-electricity, is power-full.
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.
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).