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not nor II (2025)
An installation and a collective practice of hope. Chester Photo Festival, 2025

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I walk the border

to remind you it was drawn.

I am the in-between

the pause before a step,

the hush between silence and voice,

the question before the yes,

between longing and knowing,

between leaving and staying.

This border is not empty.

It’s where becoming begins.

It’s where I begin.

This too is a place.

And I am learning to be comfortable here.

Here you find those who live in motion,

not to escape

but to listen

to gather,

to trace the shape of themselves

through shifting ground.

Those who carry questions in their spine,

who turn and return,

who dance not to be seen,

but to better understand.

In the in-between,  we are not lost.

We are learning. We are becoming.

here I am something else.

Something more

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not nor II  was an installation and 2 live performances held at the Castlefield Gallery Art Studio in Chester as part of the Chester Photo Festival in 2025 and explored what it means to live and to see the world from the margins (hooks, 1990). Through this process, I wrote a poem reflecting my own understanding of living in the in-between. The poem was installed throughout the gallery space along the skirting boards, running along the line where the wall meets the floor. Written from the position of the margin and on the margin, the poem became a point of departure for a series of artistic responses from other artists.​

 

The text generated reverberations that invited others to respond, perform and reinterpret the experience of inhabiting the in-between, echoing dialogical approaches to art practice where meaning emerges through exchange. The performance emerged through collaboration with dancer Dina Robinson, who choreographed the piece together with three professional dancers: Lily Evans, Liv Leah and Rachel Ambler. Through choreography, the poem moved from text into embodied practice. Movement became a way of thinking through the themes of marginality and relational identity, aligning with Pink’s understanding that knowledge can be generated hrough sensory and embodied experience (Pink, 2015). A fifth dancer, Eli Williams, joined the performance through improvisation. She had not seen the poem beforehand and encountered it only when she arrived at the gallery. Her movement emerged directly in response to the unfolding performance and was shaped by the choreography, the audio score, the poem displayed on the walls, the presence of the audience, and the movements of the other artists and performers.​​​

Alongside the choreography, Holly Roberts, a singer and songwriter based in North Wales, created a performance exploring the oppression experienced by those living in the in-between. Rather than using her voice, she chose to walk in silence through the space carrying the speakers. Even without singing, she became the one who carried the voice of the performance. In doing so, her presence suggested that living in the margins can also mean holding and carrying the voices of others, echoing feminist perspectives of the margin as a site from which voice and resistance can emerge (hooks, 1990). As she moved through the gallery, the sound shifted across the room, sometimes close and sometimes distant, creating a moving soundscape that travelled through the space.

 

The performance also incorporated two sound recordings from Zero Noise, originally recorded in the early 2000’s in Liverpool between the two cathedrals, introducing another dimension of the in-between into the work.​​

​Additional artistic contributions expanded the participatory and spatial dimensions of the work. Dr Janey Deng Klingelfuss developed a participatory screen-based prompt inviting questions from the audience. Drew West produced a two-metre 3D-printed beam which he balanced during the performance, symbolising the instability of borders. Anna Parkinson invited audience members into the performance through a five-minute one-to-one silent gaze, creating a direct and intimate exchange between performer and spectator. The event was documented by Dr Cian Quayle Dr Alexander Modoi (photography) and Zero Noise (video).

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Together, these interventions transformed the poem into a collective performance in which sound, movement, objects and audience participation produced a shared experiential environment. Meaning emerged through the relations between performers, audience, and space. This reflects an understanding of spectatorship in which meaning is not delivered but actively constructed through engagement, attention, and presence (Rancière, 2009).

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Creatives: 

Neuza Morais

Dina Robinson

&.

Anna Parkinson

Cian Quayle

Drew West

Eli Williams

Holly Roberts

Lily Evans

Liv Leah

Janey Deng Klingelfuss
Marlena Ankers

Olivia Leah

Rachel Ambler

Zeronoise

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Video was taken by zeronoise

Video produced by Neuza Morais

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The Music piece contains 2 audios from

zeronoise from the early 2000s

The Music was produced by Neuza Morais 

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