Recipient of the Dean’s Award for Academic Excellence and contribution to the program, Master of Arts (Art in Public Space).
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IN THE MIDDLE OF ZOË is a public performance experiment with arthouse circus and posthumanist philosophies. The work is collaborative, interdisciplinary and practice-led. It invites a multidirectional approach to amplify the surprising choreographies, images, sounds, tricks and texts that such practices reveal. In the Middle of Zoë assembles human and non-human entanglements by disrupting an embedded acrobatic language with soft sculptures that affect bodily borders. Posthumanism, new feminist materialism, relational and affective knowledge systems have guided this arts practice and research, exposing a synergy with my established passion for devising processes that are responsive and attentive to emergent ideas and ongoing political concerns.
In response to Covid-19 lockdowns in Melbourne, the live encounters have been repurposed using ubiquitous technologies that embrace the digital public realm as an alternative mode of delivery and an adjunct to the live arts practice. Experimenting with the body in movement or as active installation draws attention to our known and unknown borders, our perceived and real limits, and the blurring spheres of our pluralistic existence. Zoë rejects the boundaries between situated practices and assemblages.
The following video is promotional footage created by Claudia Sangiorgi Dalimore from a work-in-progress performance.
Performer/Devisors: Spenser Inwood, Sharon, Gruenert, Debra Iris Batton
Outside Eye/Devisor: Alexandra Harrison
Composer/Sound Design: Naima Fine
Lighting & Projection Design: Gina Gascoigne
Costume Design and maker: Clara MY Chan
debrabattoninthemiddleofzoe.wordpress.com