top of page
Untitled

SUZANNE COWAN

Ethico Super-Girl

Ethico Super-Girl was founded in 2016. I explore the disappearing element of empathy from a post-humanist perspective through site specific performance and writings. The Ethico Super-Girl site provides information about upcoming shows, exhibitions and images of past projects, as well as information about my artistic journey from dream to realization.

Home: Welcome
Home: Blog Feed

MY STORY

Dr Suzanne Cowan

I create research and performance projects informed by my PhD research into a post-human ethics, relationality,  and intimacy. Ethico Super-Girl is a persona who evolved through my performance research to articulate a mythical aspect to my enquiry into the idea of augmented bodies. My position is that we are always already extended: we lean, touch, and absorb the surfaces surrounding us which can allow us to experience ourselves as dynamic, fluid identities. Ethico Super-Girl is a play on the idea of the super-crip (a high-achieving disabled person) who rescues non-disabled people with narratives of over-coming adversity. She also represents an ethics of connectivity through her site specific performances.  Art is a powerful vehicle for offering new ways of viewing the world. Pictured below from left to right are collaborators: Emilia Rubio, Sarah Campus and myself.

Ficus Macrophylla-23.jpg
Home: About

"Imagination rules the world"

Napoleon Bonaparte

image007.jpg
Home: Quote

CONTACT ME

Thank you for your interest. For any inquiries or commission please contact Ethico Super-Girl today.

62 Surrey Crescent, Grey Lynn, Auckland 1021, New Zealand

+64 21320732

Thanks for submitting!

Good_Cripple_Manifesto_2-1.jpeg
Home: Contact

PERFORMANCE PROJECTS

Below are my recent and upcoming performance projects.

IMG-3464.JPG

THE HAUNTOLOGY OF INHERITANCE,

February 29, 2020

Through the work The Hauntology of Inheritance, dancers and choreographers Suzanne Cowan and Rodney Bell explore ideas of family heritage, the history of colonisation in New Zealand and notions of partnership. The Byers Walkway carries the name of Cowan’s ancestors and marks their role as early settlers in the Piha area. Through traversing the Byers walkway together, Bell and Cowan interrogate the legacy that Pākeha have inherited in the 21st Century and pay respects to Te Kawerau a Maki as the tangata whenua of the area.


As dancers, Rodney and Suzanne both have the lived experience of disability which gives them a unique perspective on navigating space and choreographing space. They ask how we honour our own desire to access the forest and be an active part of the lived ecology that surrounds us. With a particular interest in accessing Tāne Mahuta, the deity of the forest, they invite us to attune with the environment and consider the role of self-care, kinaesthetic empathy, interdependence and intercorporeality (including the human and non-human).

Good_Cripple_Manifesto_1-1.jpeg

MANIFESTO OF A GOOD CRIPPLE

October 28,29,30, 2019. Basement Theatre, Auckland.

From the award winning choreographer, Suzanne Cowan, (Grotteschi, Touch Compass) comes a bold new autobiographical work, Manifesto of a Good Cripple. Through a powerful combination of dance, film and theatre Cowan brings together the essence of a 20 year dance career, subversive disability humour and a surreal dream/landscape that captures her experience of a fluid identity.


Cowan takes the audience on a journey of how identity and body become synonymous with the landcapes that we move through, not just as a backdrop but as a visceral etching into our cellular memory.  The fragility of identity is a reccurring motif that Cowan embodies through her disruptive choreography.

From road tripping through the freezing, blizzard swept Canadian rockies to the highlights of performing at Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, Cowan reconfigures these experiences as a rich score of movement, sound, image and text imbued with her unique perspective  crystallised in her Manifesto statement as the antidote to inspiration porn.

The filmic backdrop is derived from archival footage and photographs which locate Cowan’s evolution as a performer and choreographer. 

The solo work is supported by interdisciplinary collaborations with creative director, Lara Liew, lighting designer, Sean Curham, choreographic adviser, Clare Luiten, dramaturgical advice, Nisha Madhan, video editor, Adam Luka Turjak, and sound design by Charlie Rose and Kristian Larsen. Photography is designed by Alyx Duncan.

Home: Projects

PAST PROJECTS

PHARMAKOS

February 2014

Pharmakos was a durational improvisation developed in a shipping container on the shores of Te Whero Island in Auckland and on the Wellington waterfront as part of the Performance Arcade Series. It became a journey of meshing with the rope, environment and the audience.

1961980_10202508154279155_2067390235_o.j
Home: Projects
image010.jpg
Home: Image
image008.jpg
Home: Image

PIHA

image006.jpg
Home: Gallery
Piha-49.jpg
Home: Gallery

FICUS MACROPHYLL

Home: Gallery

KNOT JUST BODY

Home: Gallery
bottom of page