Staff

Pernille Spence
BA (Hons), PGdip

Lecturer

Tel: 01382 381021
Email: p.j.spence@dundee.ac.uk
Room 1578, Level 1 Mathew Building,
DJCAD 13 Perth Road DD1 4HT

Biography

Pernille Spence has a background in dance, sculpture and media art. She has been creating installations, performances and moving image works since the mid 1990s, and has exhibited in the UK, Europe, USA, Australia & Tasmania. In 2004 Pernille was appointed as a 0.6 lecturer in Time Based Art & Digital Film and is currently Programme Director. Her teaching and research interests are based around the performative including live art, site specific performance & interventions and performance for camera. Pernille's research to date has largely explored a visual dialogue between the human body, movement and space, and the body's physical/psychological limits and constraints with in specific parameters.

Research Projects

FALLING UP, DANCING DOWN

15 July 2011

Falling Up, Dancing Down was a performance/installation that is part of my ongoing research interest into the limits and constraints of human movement through and within space, and ways in which the body can suspend and evade gravity.  Particular to this project the focus is on notions of achievement and failure and how can we fail without falling?

Falling Up, Dancing Down was based on a balloon flight that took place in California in 1982 by a Lawrence (Larry) Richard Walters, where he used 45 eight-foot, helium filled, weather balloons and a deck chair to soar 15,000 feet into the sky, entering controlled airspace. Walters achieved his life’s ambition but less than a decade later he took his own life, unable to meet his own expectations beyond that achievement.

Using performance as a method of addressing and questioning ideas surrounding success and failure I adapted elements of the original event to develop a performance/installation where the body was suspended approximately15ft in the air by helium filled weather balloons whilst rope and weighted ballast prevented the body floating further into the sky.  Once reaching a state of suspension I remained there until I chose to release individual balloons and allow gravity to slowly pull me back to the ground. My aim was to achieve this state of suspension in mid-air – the body being pulled in two polar directions by both gravity and the helium balloons - but also to control my descent to the ground.

Falling Up, Dancing Down was part of Dundee Live, a city wide public art and performance festival in Dundee between the 8^th and 17^th July 2011.

The Breath Between Us

6^th October 2011

The Breath Between Us was a durational performance action that was originally inspired by conversations with scientists from the Welcome Trust Centre for Gene Regulation and Expression.  The performance was further developed through discussion with Dr Sonia Rocha, who is currently undertaking research into hypoxia, where she is looking at how cells respond to low oxygen levels. Through these discussions I became interested in working with the invisibility of oxygen and playing with the body’s oxygen levels through using ‘breath’.  

In The Breath Between Us I transferred the breath from my body into a large meteorological weather balloon.  This took approximately 3.5 hours and was achieved through controlled breathing techniques. The breath slowly became visible as the balloon expanded.  A sharp object was suspended at exactly my height and as the balloon reached my height it exploded.

This was a durational performance, lasting approximately 3.5hrs, using the body, a 6ft weather balloon (expanded to 5.3ft) and a metal pole suspended from ceiling with sharp point at the end.  There was a live, amplified audio feed from the performance action.

Websites

http://www.pernille-spence.co.uk/ (currently being updated)

http://www.herenowtherenow.org/ (currently being updated)