There is mutation through decay.

“This Will All Disappear” was a performance made in response to a workshop held at Brick and Mortar Project Space. The workshop was a self-directed exploration of the derelict military underground networks and structures beneath the cliffs of Dover. The networks and structures which were made in the early nineteenth century were abandoned by mid-twentieth century and left to become overgrown. The investigation into this deserted landscape sparked a conversation about exploring the practice of performance and how the artist creates and exists in certain settings and with certain materials. We explored the ways in which we existed in the tunnels and ruins, allowing ourselves to get lost, to feel the space, sound, temperature, and each other’s movements.

The intimacies found in abandonment and transformation and the ways we can find moments of solitude and love amongst the markings of the past led me to think about queer temporality. Being queer can allow one to resist linear modes of living. The human body is part of a transitory movement, one that is continuously becoming and unbecoming in cyclical universes.

I was reminded of a film by Keiken and George Jasper Stone, Feel My Metaverse, in which the viewer is placed within a future of environmental destruction where humans live in “life units” for protection and live beyond the physical “base reality” through digital selves. We can live outside of our reality in the digital, as seen in this film, but when the world is continuously consumed through capitalism and heteropatriachy there is a question that arises around returning to our “base realities” to greet our emancipation via nature. To grow old is to change, time is change, nothing is guaranteed to stay and even the most sincerely strong systems of privilege and corruption are being challenged and modified by time.

Score of the performance:

– Artist stands with phone in hand and turns screen brightness up to full. The screen illuminates the artist’s face.

– Artist reads a passage from the film Feel My Metaverse by Keiken + George Jasper Stone.

– Artist places phone on floor.

– Artist collects can of black spray paint from floor and stands in front of blank wall.

– Artists sprays THIS WILL ALL DISAPPEAR onto wall, repeating over the original writing until the can is empty.

– Artist walks away. End.