SARAH JANE PELL, PhD

Professional artist/researcher of human performance and behaviour underwater/ in space


Pell dons a helmet during a professional visit to the ALTEC, Neutral Buoyancy Test Facility, Torino IT 2008

underwater | realities | outer space | visions

Humans experience many coexistent and contrary needs in relation to any given space. We have a desire for socialising, communicating and being close to others and, in direct contrast, we desire privacy, individuality and opportunities for meditation and creativity. I am practice-based performance researcher and I explore these issues and how they signify human patterns, rituals, behaviours and performances of day-to-day life through my laboratories and further imagine how they relate as a space analogue missions.

I became a fully qualified commercial diver and founded the Aquabatics Research Team in 2002 to explore commercial diving and creative practices together in a unique union. Originally focused on making underwater performances, my work now spans aqueous live art, digital media, installation, prototype pneumatic technologies, philosophies and experiments with advanced life support and living systems.

The primary function of Aquabatics research praxis is to critique and extend the human condition through the physical and psychological limits of the body and aesthetics of care operations and life support in extreme environments - from underwater, on earth and in outer space. It is Sarah's intention to make vital interventions and inventions in the form of design, culture, new media performance and philosophy. Furthermore, Pell considers the wider terms of engagement with what may, or what may become, the spectrum or site in/of/for contemporary performance exploration, particular to the body in future weightless environment training (WET) and digitally real immersive (DRI) space.