Unknowing
Unknowing is a performance project that questions how choreography with sculptural materials can create a sense of estrangement from one’s own body. Zoë Bastin delves into the abject and overlooked elements of human psychology, constructing a silicone sculpture filled with water to match her body weight precisely. This "double" confronts her physicality, becoming an out-of-body experience.
Movement is shaped by this material encounter, as Bastin drags and explores the fleshy, abstracted mass during live performances and on video. This process draws from the unfamiliar, evoking humility and inadequacy as she contends with an object embodying her own weight. Unknowing invites audiences to witness this estranged relationship, making visible the vulnerabilities and complexities of confronting one’s embodied presence.
Unknowing, 2018
3.20min single channel video or live performance
silicon, rubber, water (sculpture)
Performed by Zoë Bastin. Presented by Seventh Gallery, MADA Gallery Monash University and Frei Universität Berlin with support from HDR research Fund, RMIT University. Photography and video documentation by Madeline Bishop. Words by Laura Couttie. This project was developed with the assistance of the late great John Nixon.