H Y D R O P H I L I A
LIVE ART | PNUEMATIC ACTION | AQUABATICS

Live Performance
BEAP04 | Biennale of Elecronic Arts, Perth | PICA | 2004

Media Installations | Exposition
Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts | Taipei, Taiwan | 2007
BOOM! Australian-Taiwan New Media | TNUA | Taipei, Taiwan | 2007
SPARTEN: Space, Art & Environment | Reykjavik Arts Festival | Iceland | 2006
FREEDMAN AWARDS | Stepps Gallery | Sydney AU | 2006
HANDS FREE | Dorchester Arts Centre | UK | 2005
HANDS FREE | 2m2 Gallery | Stravenger | Norway | 2005
MAF05 | Multimedia Asia Pacific Festival | Bangkok | Thailand | 2005
WALKING WITH WATER | Western Australian Maritime Musuem AU | 2005
STUDIO II | Sea of Live(d) Dreams | Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts AU | 2004

Conditions for the performance
Is it possible to encounter subspace through land-based ritual? I perform wearing a prototype SSBA “Oyster” diving helmet filled with 30lt of saline. Air is drawn from the surface via an umbilical. The sinuses are flooded. Controlled epiglottal function prevents drowning. The performance continues under commercial diver supervision and protocols exploring fields of consciousness and pneumatoses for 111minutes.



Review | Critical discussion
Heinonen, T., (2006) 'Aquabatics - performancsseja sisaavaruudessa. Mita Tapahtuu Estystaiteen ja sukel-lusteknologian kohdetessa?' Vappa Kirjoittaja Sukeltaja; Teatteri – Esitystaiteen Aikakauslehti, Porovoo Finland. 7/06 pp. 36-37.
Marshall, J., (2005) The Art of Life Support, Real Time & On Screen Vol 68, Aug/ Sep 2005, p.48
Britton, S., (2005) uncollectable artists? New Work ‘Aquabatics’ Sarah Jane Pell, Artlink Australia, Vol 25 No 3, pp.58 -59.
Bell, S., (2005) Heidegger & BioTech Art, Paper given at SymbioticA, the art & science laboratory, School of Anatomy & Human Biology, University of Western Australia, December 17


The Apparatus
The site of the performance had to be constructed, and operated, in strict adherence to the requirements and recommendations of both the Australia Standards for commercial diving activities ASNZ 2299:1999 and the occupational health and safety regulations of the gallery. This meant that the performance itself had to be carried out according to the protocols of conduct and safe operation with fully qualified standby diver support teams. Supporting ‘diving’ equipment was stowed on three window ledges to the audiences’ right hand side of the dive site along the back wall. This included 20-30lts Saline Solution, 10 white bathroom towels, 1 First aid kit, 1 Oxy Viva, 1 Tool kit, 1 Bucket and a copy of the ARTi Operations Manual, In-date Diver Log Book and associated paperwork. These precautionary requirements hightened the aspects of operation, performance, risk management and accuracy that play such a large part of my performance planning across all acts/actions/activisms.

The main installation comprised of a custom made leaning apparatus designed to support my sacrum iliac and lower back. The curvature of its small arc could be used as either an armrest or a stabilising orientation device in poor visibility. The perch was made from welded steel with neoprene padding and chrome finishes on the arm ends. It was bolted to a dive platform (2m x 2m hardwood ply tray edged with 4”x2” supports and lined with black plastic). I dressed in a black evening frock, Lycra hood, an adjustable neoprene neck dam and a custom designed and fabricated surface supplied breathing helmet called an “Oyster”.

The “Oyster” was an apparatus fashioned from two 3mm solid acrylic sheets hand moulded into semi spheres and then welded together. The domes were moulded to the size of a commercial surveillance camera surround called an oyster. The neck hole was cut across the seam by hand and eye then filed down to create an irregular opening that would accommodate the shape of my head (but not ears!). A section of PVC plumbing was heat moulded to make a neck brace and glued to the thin irregular edge of the cavity. I lined the inner seams with sticky-back neoprene, gaffer tape and silicone glue then drilled, glued and fitted marine quality steel and silicone fittings for the mouth piece, hose, and small filter over the air vent, attaching a quick-release valve that could also double as a bilge and filling port and a u-clip to hang the helmet from. The oyster was finished with a stainless steel clamp around the entire neck fitting securing the rubber dry suit neck seal from the body to the oyster shell itself to create a water proof seal and a glistening “watertight” aesthetic.

The “Oyster” was suspended above the perch by wire rope leading to a retractable pulley installed in the ceiling to act as a fall arrestor, an orientation guide and to minimise the direct weight being born on my spinal column. (When I was not present, the “Oyster” was suspended at my eye height approx 174cm from the ground.) The performance site was lit with 6 cams and 12LEDs directed from an underwater camera positioned at the front of the dive platform.



Pell wearing the "Oyster" surface supplied breathing apparatus (SSBA) September 11, at Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, 2004. Video Lorraine Corker.


Discussion of the Performance
The performance of Hydrophilia began with the desire to engage my team, the viewer and myself in pneumatoses. The word pneumatoses encapsulates many apt associations including states of spiritual being, an air cavity and/or it may refer to a space to breathe. Can the interior and exterior functions of pneumatoses be infused as a public performance spectacle? Can I generate pneumatoses with the audience and space? By recognising that a relationship between air, breath and the spirit occurs when the bio/tech unit sustains life in a saturated environment, can the immaterial be considered as one part of the functional unity of the performance and installation design? Hydrophilia was carefully constructed to reveal the processes, operations and protocols of occupational diving to an audience. It was a deliberate stratgy to demystify some of the mythologies surrounding what I do. At the same time, I wanted to inspire the imaginations and passions of my witnesses as I shared with them my love of ‘being hydrous’ what ever the cost. The first incarnation of the performance was fraught with technical difficulties. The neck seal leaked, the filling process was inefficient – both a design fault of mine as the filling port diameter was too small and an issue of technique – and difficulties arose with signaling and a lack of understanding of the mechanics of the apparatus with one non-diver assistant. There were all sorts of potential hazards. Needless to say, the issues of communication and aesthetics of care in the performance were amplified.

During the second staging of Hydrophilia performed on September 11, 2004, for example, most spectators stayed with me the entire duration of 111 minutes. Even the claustrophobic abandoned their conflicting impulses, and kept returning to the space. Upon reflection, I have been considering the certain dilemmas about freedom and memory that are represented equally in the performance. Performing Hydrophilia, in many ways, is a period of self imposed concentration. The work is a type of incarceration and self-imposed bondage, but the subversive element of the work is that there is actually nothing to ‘escape’ from or to ‘break free of’ except the terms or rules of my own engagement. In this way the performance is, just as importantly, a critical political and personal gesture of meditation and transformation. The Aquabatic freedom and possibility for liberation and serenity is bound up in the illustrative burden of the weight of a head filled with water. The body anchored by the enormous weight and trapped behind its own. The separation from the audience and the self-imposed internalisation was also intended to be ominous. Overall the installation design cultivated an ever-present state of aloneness. I was safe and out of reach, contented that I was untouchable and therefore uncompromised or incorruptible. The staging intended to amplify this isolation. I found that I was connected to the liminality that I experience in the ocean at this distance. I was pleased that I could ‘member the ocean in front of an audience, both as much for their sake as for mine. The social performance/ sculpture exacerbated the seeming futility of the desire to be performing underwater in the ocean for real and highlighted the imaginative feats that I must undertake to dream and transport myself to an Aquabatic state of being from a land-based position.

Hydrophilia revealed the art of courting danger by confronting the body to act in unnatural ways. It concentrated the techne diving and of faith. The spectator was implicated in threat or promise of asphyxiation and their sadistic, innocent pleasure, was either diverted or compounded by the rhythmical, meditative and metronome-quality breathing soundtrack that accompanies the performance and provides an immersive and soothing fabric to the work. There was a kind of pathos in the vision and the limited action that I could perform whilst wearing the headpiece so the diver | ocean | aquanaut had to be re|membered or imagined. The most memorable feedback came from a nine-year-old friend Casey. His mother asked him what he thought the performance was about and he replied, "Sarah was dreaming." Casey was right. It was a space for dreaming. (Another child reported seeing imaginary sharks and sat on the floor to play with them too so I guess the notion of the ocean translated in more ways than I imagined.) The poetics of this piece allowed for an analogue, simulation and a real space to coexist. The long duration and the slow breathing stretched and slowed down percieved measures of time between inhalations and exhalations. It brought about an ocean-time or desert-time, and, as Baudrillard might say, there became ‘the silence of the image’. If I was right, we all shared our territories and experiences through pneumatoses.

In Memory of John (Jack) McCunnie -2004



Pell wearing the "Oyster" surface supplied breathing apparatus (SSBA) September 11 at Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, 2004. Video Lorraine Corker.


CRITICAL OUTCOMES:

 The process of making Live art, (and indeed life) has value in conferring desires rather than escaping fears. Aquabatics is not a passage of suffering.
 Saline is much more suitable than water for long periods of immersion.
 The compression on the spinal column leads to vertebra fractures and places pressure on the spinal fluids. Rather than a fall arrestor a weight-relieving device should be used in future.
 The engineering of the “Oyster” needs to be reconsidered so that the neck dam doesn’t leak. I should also be able to slip out of it should I faint or choke – because the permanent ‘gaffer’ top-seal – whilst waterproofing- means that I would hang myself if I passed out!
 In future non-slip marine matting should be placed in the waterproofing tray, to prevent slipping or falling that in the current configuration would break my neck.
 Aquabatics is a state of mind and a condition of the body that is about engagement and confrontation with fears and desires for the artist and audience.

The NAVA Visual and Craft Artists’ Grant, managed by NAVA with financial assistance from the Visual Arts/Craft Board of the Australia Council, the Simpson-Michel Foundation and Pat Corrigan, sponsored this project.
This work was developed with the generous support of a PICA Research & Development Grant made possible by the State of WA through ArtsWA in association with the Lotteries Commission, 2003.


Web Links
www.pica.org.au/exhibitions/2004/sjpell

Click picture for close up view

WARNING This page includes images that some viewers may find disturbing. All works were performed by highly trained professionals under strictly controlled conditions in accordance with AS2299. Mature Audiences are recommended.

043-1 | HYDROPHILIA | 2004 BEAP04 | Biennale of Electronic Arts Perth | PICA Performed & Devised by Sarah Jane Pell (ADAS2r) | Standby Divers Paul Masters (ADAS3) & Corioli Souter (ADAS2) | Sound/ Assistant Kieran Stuart | Video Lorraine Corker. | BEAP04 | Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts | 2004

043-2 | HYDROPHILIA | 2004 BEAP04 | Biennale of Electronic Arts Perth | PICA Performed & Devised by Sarah Jane Pell (ADAS2r) | Standby Divers Paul Masters (ADAS3) & Corioli Souter (ADAS2) | Sound/ Assistant Kieran Stuart | Video Lorraine Corker. | BEAP04 | Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts | 2004

043-3 | HYDROPHILIA | 2004 BEAP04 | Biennale of Electronic Arts Perth | PICA Performed & Devised by Sarah Jane Pell (ADAS2r) | Standby Divers Paul Masters (ADAS3) & Corioli Souter (ADAS2) | Sound/ Assistant Kieran Stuart | Video Lorraine Corker. | BEAP04 | Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts | 2004

043-4 | HYDROPHILIA | 2004 BEAP04 | Biennale of Electronic Arts Perth | PICA Performed & Devised by Sarah Jane Pell (ADAS2r) | Standby Divers Paul Masters (ADAS3) & Corioli Souter (ADAS2) | Sound/ Assistant Kieran Stuart | Video Lorraine Corker. | BEAP04 | Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts | 2004

043-5 | HYDROPHILIA | 2004 BEAP04 | Biennale of Electronic Arts Perth | PICA Performed & Devised by Sarah Jane Pell (ADAS2r) | Standby Divers Paul Masters (ADAS3) & Corioli Souter pictured (ADAS2) | Sound/ Assistant Kieran Stuart | Video Lorraine Corker. | BEAP04 | Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts | 2004

043-6 | HYDROPHILIA | 2004 BEAP04 | Biennale of Electronic Arts Perth | PICA Performed & Devised by Sarah Jane Pell (ADAS2r) | Standby Divers Paul Masters (ADAS3) & Corioli Souter (ADAS2) | Sound/ Assistant Kieran Stuart | Video Lorraine Corker. | BEAP04 | Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts | 2004