GOO:GA : ‘if I have to maybe squeeze a corpse out of my pussy, I’m going to get a fucking good show out of it.’

Ballou, Hannah (2025) GOO:GA : ‘if I have to maybe squeeze a corpse out of my pussy, I’m going to get a fucking good show out of it.’. International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, ISSN (print) 1479-4713 (Epub Ahead of Print)

Abstract

This practice research article and collection of extracts from GOO:GA (2021), a comic live art film made during and about the pandemic pregnancy of lead artist Hannah Ballou, discusses the project’s investigation of comic subjectivity in pregnant performance. The effects of the re-performance of comic material made by/about a pregnant body during a subsequent traumatic pregnancy on the process of the comedian are analysed. Iris Marion Young’s theory of the doubling of the pregnant subject is expanded as a tripling, as the pre-pregnant self and the uneventful pregnancy are joined by the precarious pregnancy when Ballou’s fetus is diagnosed with a rare cardiac anomaly. As a development of recent scholarship on ambivalence in pregnant comic practice, not only is the abjection of pregnancy mined for comedy, but also the taboo of precarious pregnancy, resulting in a practical counterargument to a Bergsonian model of comedy vis-à-vis trauma.

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