John Zibell, MFA, PhD is currently the Creative Director of the EcoGPX project at Intercultural Roots, a registered UK charity working across the intersections of arts, health, and community development. Until September 2023 he was a lecturer in Film Production at the University of Salford where he also served as International Exchange Coordinator (on the BA) and Admissions Lead (MA). Zibell was instrumental in the conceptualization and development of the Salford Master’s Degree in Film Production which centers on devising and experimental cinema practices. Zibell recently co-edited a special edition of Performance Matters interrogating the embodied camera. Zibell earned his PhD in Performance Studies from UC Davis, and is a performance scholar / practitioner working on devising-as-decolonial practice, critical training, and radical politics. His material practices happen in the theater, cinema, gallery, and the street and interrogate exhaustion, image, and presencing. Zibell earned the Provost’s Dissertation Year Fellowship at UC Davis, during which time he developed a major Practice as Research work in the immersive virtual reality environment of the UC Davis KeckCAVES. The piece (Scoring Beckett 0.2) was suggested by the film/TV works of Samuel Beckett and the outcome was a dissertation chapter on the systematizing of actor training practices involving embodied engagement with time-based media. As well as a practicing scholar, John is a conservatory-trained actor currently working with a company of actors/filmmakers using the methodologies from his research in the CAVES to produce workshops directed at cinematic devising strategies around de-unifying the camera’s “gaze.” Another research focus constellates around strategies (largely taken from traditional theatrical knowledge systems) that can be used to pull the camera into practice and process as an active player in cinema, theater, and trans-media work.

Specialism: Devising, Film Making, Performance, Physical Theatre, Theatre, Visual Arts, XR