Zander Porter in collaboration with James Batchelor / [Digital] Alien Intimacy
[Digital] Alien Intimacy speculates on an interpersonally constructed “alien sensibility” where the visible and the invisible, or the physically embodied and the virtually disembodied, intertwine. The duo’s speculative choreography proposes new landscapes comprised of console gaming scenography and low-res NASA images. “Touch” is recalled as a microscopic gravitational force and a magnetic repulsion over the illusory notion of a direct contact. In Alien Intimacy, “contact” is macroscopically proportioned, inviting new senses of (non)touch-touch, the “almost-touchable,” or a “space-in-between.” Both the concept and content of Alien Intimacy emerged in 2019-2020 through bodily/extra-bodily choreographic relationships to digital interfaces. The work has been danced for staged audiences in Birmingham, Berlin, Ho Chi Minh City, Bangkok, Canberra, and Prague. In its newest iteration, [Digital] Alien Intimacy merges “audience” with “smartphone” and “stage” with “socially-distanced public” to re-conceptualize contact-points between viewers across neighborhoods, oceans, and browsers.
Zander Porter is a US-American artistic researcher and choreographer-cyborg based primarily in Berlin with additional frequencies in Los Angeles, Amsterdam, and Tokyo. Working between liveness and onlineness, ze interpolates (dis)identification and (dis)embodiment as phenomenological inquiries between surface, soma, portal, and psyche. Zander has been a core member of XenoEntities Network (XEN), a platform for discussion and experimentation focusing on intersections of queer, gender, and feminist studies with digital technologies. Ze has worked or participated in residencies at Swiss Institute (New York), Cité internationale des arts (Paris), Trauma Bar und Kino (Berlin), the Saison Foundation (Tokyo), National Institute for Space Research (São José dos Campos), and Leonardo@Djerassi (Woodside), amongst other international exhibition participations.
James Batchelor (b. 1992) is a choreographer from Ngunnawal Country (Canberra, Australia), with an international dance practice that spans research, performance and teaching. After studying a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Dance) at the Victorian College of the Arts, James’s career has taken a unique path notably for his participation in an interdisciplinary expedition to the Antarctic. His body of work has toured widely to contexts such as Tanz im August (Berlin), Centre Pompidou (Paris) and Impulstanz (Vienna). He was part of the prestigious Aerowaves program in 2019 with his solo ‘Hyperspace' and has made commissioned work for companies such as Chunky Move (AU) and Norrdans (SE).
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zanderporter.com
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