GOO: GA II

This practice research film investigates re-performance in the context of autobiographical live art and comic subjectivity in pregnancy. Underwood-Lee & Simic (2021) have noted the dearth of performance made by/about the pregnant body, and the goo:ga series addresses this first with 2016's stage show, and then with this live art film which takes a palimpsestic approach to re-performance. The original work developed Iris Marion Young's theory of the doubling of the pregnant subject (see Ballou 2016, Underwood-Lee & Simic 2021) By re-performing material from goo:ga (2016) alongside footage of that performance, goo:ga II (2021) searches for a new approach to this doubling in the context of a very different pregnancy to uncover how the re-performance of material made by/about a joyously pregnant body in the throes of a later traumatic pregnancy might further develop Young's theories. It also investigates how writing/devising/performing within a traumatic experience (as opposed to reflecting upon it) impacts the creative process of the comedian. This is pertinent to the wider debate around the necessity of distance, time, and Henri Bergson's 'momentary anaesthesia of the heart' in the formulation of the comic, as well as the continuing feminist intervention in the construction of the maternal afforded by pregnant comic practice.