In
unbetitelter Tanz (or spectral relationality in psychosomatic crisis), Zander Porter and Julie Zhu fuse movement and sound through multi-modal, machine-learning mappings. Zander performs the network activity backlog of a post-internet cyborg (a body), while Julie navigates the movement-synchronized beatings and shrieks from no-input feedback. The performance was initiated when the two artists met in residency at Leonardo@Djerassi in Woodside (California) in 2024. Through their recent/current residency with ICST at ZHdK and support from Daniel Bisig, they are recording various improvisations and experimentations with motion capture and sound, gesture recognition and motion continuation, and holographic and psychic embodiments towards unfolding additional immersive capacities of the performance.
Biographies Zander Porter is an artistic researcher and choreographer-cyborg; working between liveness and onlineness, ze interpolates (dis)identification and (dis)embodiment as phenomenological inquiries between surface, soma, portal, and psyche. Citing internet semiotics, hormonal technologies, corporeality, and surveillance paradigms with a mixture of curiosity, reverence, irony, and skepticism, Zander’s work critically exposes neoliberal orders of hyper-individualization and reimagines staged/documented ceremonies of the techno-social. Ze articulates byproducts (expressions, performativities) of this negotiation as (technogenetic, neuroatypical) matrices of queerer relationality. Zander (ザンダー, زاندر) has been a core member of XenoEntities Network (XEN), a platform for discussion and experimentation focusing on intersections of queer, gender, and feminist studies with digital technologies. Ze has worked or participated in residencies at Swiss Institute / Contemporary Art (New York), Cité internationale des arts (Paris), Trauma Bar und Kino (Berlin), the Saison Foundation (Tokyo), National Institute for Space Research (São José dos Campos), and Leonardo@Djerassi (Woodside), alongside reception of disparate production and research grants or awards and participation in various exhibition and festival contexts internationally. Zander is an avid 펌프 잇 업 (Pump It Up) player and linguistic hobbyist (incl. Spanish, German, Japanese, Arabic, Latin, and computer programming).
Julie Zhu is a composer, artist, and carillonist. Technology—from artificial intelligence to live sound processing, sensors, and virtual reality—often supports her work, which seeks to reveal and amplify underlying mathematical structures and gentle noises through innovative intermedia instrumentation and diverse chamber experiences. Her music has been featured on Radio France’s Création Mondiale and at various institutions such as GMEM Festival Propagations Marseille, IRCAM Paris, Sansusī Latvia, Tetramatyka Lviv, Carnegie Hall, among others. Zhu’s research on music and AI focuses on the project Deep Drawing, which tests the machine’s capabilities for bringing the intricate noises of drawing and writing to visual life. Other long-term projects include Talking Pupils, a VR Opera centered on the experience of the visually impaired, and the Bell Resonator, a device to sustain the sound of a bell. Zhu teaches intermedia composition as an Assistant Professor of Performing Arts Technology at the University of Michigan.