Ally Bisshop
Ally Bisshop is a Berlin-based artist, writer and researcher, originally from Meanjin (Brisbane), Australia. Drawing upon training across both art and science, her research enrols methods and concepts from multiple disciplines to think critically and creatively about the material, affective, ethical and relational thresholds between human and nonhuman. Her research and process-driven practice combines sculpture, sound, text, film, dialogue and image – drawing inspiration from subjects as varied as science fiction, mythology, posthuman theory, queer death studies, sensing practices and animal behaviour. From October 2022, Ally will take up a lecturing position at Griffith University (Film School/ Creative Arts Research Institute), where she will be developing and teaching STEM units to tertiary students across creative arts disciplines – visual art, film, music and performance. Ally is always open for collaborations – particularly in the realms of sensory and behavioural ecology. Ally first studied microbiology and molecular biology at the University of Queensland (B.Sc. Hons 1). She studied visual art practice at University of New South Wales Sydney Art and Design, and at the Universität der Künste Berlin, through Olafur Eliasson’s Institut für Räumexperimente. In 2018 she completed her practice-based artistic PhD (UNSW National Institute for Experimental Arts), with an exploration of more-than-human artistic techniques active in process-driven praxis. Her doctoral thesis is available online: ‘Articulating thresholds: artistic techniques for more-than-human sensitivities’. In 2013, she undertook a formative research residency at the Senselab laboratory for thought in motion in Montreal (founded by Erin Manning), and has participated in multiple Senselab events. In 2014, she was a participant in the inaugural Anthropocene Campus at HKW Berlin: a scene-defining event for transdisciplinary approaches to the wicked problem(s) of the Anthropocene. Since 2017, she has been an associate researcher within the Arachnophilia community initiated by artist Tomás Saraceno.