Unreal limbs: Erin Ball and the extended body in contemporary circus

Document Type

Book Chapter

Publication Title

Circus, Science and Technology: Dramatising Technological Innovation

Publisher

Palgrave Macmillan / Springer

School

Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA)

RAS ID

32448

Comments

Lavers, K., Burtt, J., & Ball, E. (2020). Unreal limbs: Erin Ball and the extended body in contemporary circus. In A. S. Jürgens (Ed.), Circus, Science and Technology: Dramatising Technological Innovation (pp. 33-54). Palgrave Macmillan / Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43298-0_3

Abstract

Innovative prostheses are generating new possibilities for artists, performers and athletes with adaptive bodies. Performers, such as Aimee Mullins working with Alexander McQueen and Matthew Barney, and Viktoria Modesta working with Sophie de Oliveira Barata of The Alternative Limb Project, are leading the way in exploring an emerging terrain of unreal prosthetic limbs. This chapter compares this world of surreal prosthetic limbs to the drawing game ‘Exquisite Corpse’ invented in Paris in 1925 by the Surrealist artists André Breton, Marcel Duchamp, Yves Tanguy and Jacques Prévert, in the way they both raise powerful questions as to the boundaries of the human body and the interrelationship between the corporeal and the non-corporeal. In 2014 Erin Ball, the Canadian Contemporary Circus artist, after suffering severe frostbite, had both of her lower legs amputated. This chapter follows her in her determination to re-imagineer her adaptive body and to explore the world of surreal prosthetic limbs in Contemporary Circus performance. The writing also explores the emerging collaboration between Erin Ball and Kristina Walsh, a Canadian prosthetics designer, currently Artist in Residence at the Sarabande Studios which are run by the Alexander McQueen Foundation in London.

DOI

10.1007/978-3-030-43298-0_3

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