Presented as a part of the Ecofutures Festival, Deep Trash is a bi-annual, one night only event consisting of unrestricted and defiant performances, installations, artworks and video works. Deep Trash can be described as East London’s exhibition-cum-performance club night. The night by Eco Trash investigates current ecological anti-utopia in order to reveal future imaginaries for the planet and her diversity of living organisms. The experience can, in brief, be summed up as an encounter with “present and future visions of our ecological landscapes in a variety of utopic possibilities and dystopic realities.”
Confrontations with hybrid creatures, an antidote for overconsumption in a techno futurist reality; these are just some of the elements that the event comprises of to establish an immersive Eco Trash event. Mystic papayas. Ecolove. Ecosex. Let me not forget the BDSM techno shamanist practices opposed to ecocide or the “queer counteractions to the Anthropocene” and Afrofuturistic sonic healing.
The event included an exhibition element as well as interactive installations and performances that unpack issues related to gender, sexuality and race in relation to ecology and environment.
Performances included:
Veneration (Victoria W & Nicole B) presented Suit your desires a safe space for catharsis of the duo’s vexations with the unequal power structure of predominantly white cisgendered male CEOs that commit ecocide toward marginalised communities through BDSM performance. Audiences are invited to vent their feelings at the “subs in suits” who are representative of the collective CEO archetype under Veneration’s control. “This ritual aims to cure the community through performative catharsis so that they might be able to combat ecocide more efficiently once they experience a flipping of the power dynamics.”
an anthropocene queen stalks the moors
the earth groans
cracking breaking skin
hooked on this spit drip
frack me daddy frack me
that genderquake was a 6.8
nobody loves me and the sun’s gonna kill me
it’s JUST high pressure water
i’m scared + tired + lonely
A contemporary rite for queer survival, a stagger thru eco + gender anxieties, a collision of non-binary politics + climate catastrophe.
Unexpected Item by Danielle Imara is a performance piece that looks at the dehumanising frustrations associated with the automated check-out system expressed as an unnerving hip-hop trance featuring the recorded voice that drives you crazy.
CUNTsauna / Snippsauna by Arize Amazons! (Karin Victorin and Rebecca Tiger) is a “Grand Vaginale” wiccan celebration of the yoni/vagina through an onstage steaming session. This steaming refers to cleansing the vagina with herbal steam to “care for and heal her and her-story”. As a part of our body “that we are raised to neglect, the time has come to call this sacred part of us to awaken.” With this performance, they ask how the neglect of our inner climate mirror (vagina) affects the neglect of the outer climate (climate change)? The performance in no way excludes people who were born without a vagina – “yoni” is a symbolic matter and is inclusive of all.
Sit and Wait and Be Sweet by Eunjung Kim and Burong (曾不容) is a performance that speaks to becoming a future hybrid predator that sets a trap but is simultaneously trapped. The performers use their lips, fingers, tongues and saliva to create webs with bubble gum residue. The art is left in a state of inedibility.
Sonic Healing by Fallon Mayanja creates a space where sound is a healer and a storyteller. Born from Afrofuturism, Sonic Healing “glitches parallel to a present” we could inhabit. “From a back-and-forth movement from past to future, from future to past; from the earth to the universe. The elements in there are our shapes, our beginnings and our ends; we are plants, lands, stars, more and others. We exist in all spaces and times to extend our presence, still connected to our realities as the brown and/or queer bodies.”
Artists of the night included: Adam Seid Tahir / Anna Nolda Nagele / Barbara Gamper / Cecilia Cavalieri / Craestor / Dakota Gearhart / Eliana Otta / Erik Thörnqvist / Francisco Navarrete Sitja / Helena Cardow / Intimate Jelly / Izzy Bravo / Jo Pester / Julia Oldham / Karl Munstedt / Karine Bonneval / Landon Newton / Maria Papi / Meghan Moe Beitiks / Nonhuman Nonsense / Nuoran Zhang / Romily Alice Walden / Shvemy Sewing Cooperative / Zaneta Zukalova
