Beside Our Selves
Panic as Unbecoming
PhD thesis, Writing and Society Research Centre, Western Sydney University, 2022
This site is a repository of files associated with my thesis. There are video, sound files, links to podcasts and reviews.
Preface
An opening gesture toward the work ahead.
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This work emerges from the intersection of performance, philosophy, and the lived experience of panic. It traces the unbecoming of the self through states of dissolution and intensity.
Foreshadowing
Intimations of what is to come.
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A prologue of fragments and tremors. The body already knows what approaches—the anticipatory shudder before the wave breaks.
Introduction
Setting the stage for panic and unbecoming.
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Panic unmakes us. This introduction maps the territory of unbecoming—where the self dissolves into states of intensity, sensation, and radical openness.
Chapter 1
How Does Your Data Glow?
Explorations of data, luminosity, and presence.
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The luminous body rendered in data streams. How do we glow in the networks that trace and track us? What light escapes the capture of surveillance?
Chapter 2
The Shimmer Body
Bodies in flux, trembling at the edges of form.
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The body shimmers at its edges, refusing stable form. Here flesh becomes atmospheric—a trembling between presence and dissolution.
Chapter 3
Ictic Vocalities
Voice, seizure, and sonic disruption.
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The voice in seizure, the ictus of sound that breaks through meaning. Vocal intensities that rupture language and open onto pure sonority.
Chapter 4
Geotrauma
Earth's memory, geological violence, deep time.
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The earth remembers its wounds. Geotrauma traces the deep time of catastrophe written in stone, the violence of planetary becoming.
Chapter 5
The Body as Laboratory
Experimental flesh, testing the limits.
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The body becomes a site of experimentation—testing its own limits, pushing toward thresholds where form and formlessness meet.
Chapter 6
Conclusion: Exosmosis
Leaking outward, dissolving boundaries.
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Exosmosis—the outward flow, the leaking of self into world. Here boundaries dissolve and panic opens onto new modes of being beside ourselves.
Bibliography
Sources and citations.
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The voices and texts that inform this work—from philosophy to performance theory, neuroscience to sound studies.
Big Anxiety Festival, 2019
Photo: Linda Dement
panic's breath
Disclaimer Journal, Liquid Architecture
Xenoblood live at the Metro, Adelaide, 2019
with Alice Nillson
More on SoundCloud →Orifice Oriented Ontologies
Liquid Architecture podcast episode with Archie Barry, V Barratt, Frances Barrett and Debris Facility, 2022
Experiencing Rupture: affective art and becoming-with slow emergencies
V Barratt, Jessie Boylan & Linda Dement, "Understanding, Acknowledging, Representing Environmental Emergency", E-Rea Journal, February, 2021
Performance Script
Tell me what you see outside
Script for the performance work.
View ScriptRUPTURE Catalogue
Catalogue from the 2018 Bendigo Art Gallery installation: RUPTURE
RUPTURE Catalogue
RealTime Review: RUPTURE
Big Anxiety Festival 2019
RealTime Review
my body belongs to the hole
V Barratt, Orifice Oriented Ontologies, ACCA, Naarm, Melbourne, Wurundjeri land, Kulin Nation, 2022
my body belongs to the hole
RUPTURE
multimedia installation with J Boylan + L Dement, Bendigo Art Gallery, 2018
RUPTURE
Geobody : Coregulation
FELTlive performance event, V Barratt with Lauren Abineri and Em Konig, RUMPUS, Adelaide, 2020
Geobody : Coregulation
Performance: the expanse of a dead open mouth
Queensland School of Continental Philosophy, Griffith University, 2016
Performance: the expanse of a dead open mouth
Tell Me What You See Outside
video installation, In Her Interior (V Barratt and Francesca da Rimini), Badeverbot, Schaumbad-Freies Atelierhaus, Graz, 2020
Tell Me What You See Outside
RUPTURE
live performance with multi channel video and audio, J Boylan, L Dement, V Barratt, Big Anxiety Festival, 2019
RUPTURE
interruptions, iterations, intimations and peregrinations
In Her Interior (V Barratt and Francesca da Rimini) with Stuart Maxted and Alice Farmer, Format Studios, Format Forever Festival, October 2017
interruptions, iterations, intimations and peregrinations
Exosmosis
live performance installation and Twitch stream, V Barratt, Em König, Lauren Abineri, Samstag Museum of Art, Tarntanya, Adelaide, Kaurna Land, 2022
Exosmosis
Panic and Annihilation
Virginia Barratt and Frances Barrett in conversation
Panic and Annihilation