ME
I am a cisgendered, asexual, white woman, pronouns she /her, I am over 60, I am a mother. I am unpartnered. My father was a delivery truck driver, he died in his 50s from cancer, my mother was a part time shop assistant who loved to play tennis, she died from Alzheimers Disease at 93, just before covid-19 played havoc with funerals. I am privileged; I have a small mortgage remaining on my 2 bedroom flat in St Kilda. I am grateful especially during the lockdowns that my home is safe, secure and gives me access to a spacious environment close to the city. How much detail is really needed to communicate ones identity?
I am a feminist, I consider ‘Feminism’ as an open-ended movement that continues to challenge my thinking, my relationships, my politics – the way I live, and my arts practice.
I am not a brand.
I could go on. . . (Grammarly informs me I overuse the ellipsis)
I am working with the body and performance, it is a practice-led, experimental and accumulative process that includes all of my lived experience up to this time. I am a promiscuous artist; dance, theatre, circus, improvisation as performance, clown, contemporary performance, and physical theatre (including outdoor performances in public space) contribute to my body of work. In recent years I have often referred to myself as an ‘acrobat’ for three reasons: firstly because gymnastics in my childhood and adolescence has undeniably influenced my embodied nature; secondly, because I enjoy the low brow connotations, and finally it’s delightfully out of the ordinary to be an acrobat with a seniors card. Alas, dissecting this psychology is for another time. . . I have thought about performance, art, space, time and the relationship between art and audience, but have avoided writing because it feels like a second language and I am less intelligent with this language than with my body-based practices. I don’t want your sympathy just your patience. (I have broken Chicago’s rules with footnotes as it makes no sense to me to have them continue across pages on a web site that is not read chronologically. The bibliography too is not within the guidlines and the type setting guides was beyond my wordpress capabilities.) While I work as an independent artist I also work with a small circus ensemble.
WE: A GOOD CATCH
The work I am presenting here is not mine alone. It belongs to a community of artists working in a collaborative process to produce a public performance that meets our present concerns. As such I will often be speaking as “We”. It is a differentiated we of varied assemblages; ‘we’ the company ‘A Good Catch’ (three women who span over 3 decades); ‘we’ the interdisciplinary collaborative artists, (+5); (see Relations of Zoë) and the ‘we’ that is all of the performative components, human and non-human in relationship with each other.
In the Middle of Zoë 