scum!!! Grand Union Gallery/Canal Samhain edition; 2024. film by Robert Alexander.
SCUM!!!
What if we kissed, they said, at the intersection of self and other/ body and corpse, you said I don’t know if I can tell the difference between me and other people and I’m just sitting here trying to count your ribs and wrap myself in viscera.
No skin in the game except for the scum on the top of the water/ skin on top of milk. No game in the skin except for your sweat in my eye and now I can’t bear to see what I’m drowning in. I said, the monster is one who lives in transition. One whose face, body and behaviours cannot yet be considered true in a predetermined regime of knowledge and power.* I still can’t tell the difference between myself and other people, they replied.
Ok so what if we kissed between the still slick surface of the water and the terrifying depths below? When does water become underwater anyway and is this just in relation to our own bodies? and what if we go there….
* P.B. Preciado, Can the Monster Speak?: Report to an Academy of Psychoanalysts, F. Wynne, trans. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2021) pp. 41–42.
scum!!! was conceived of and first performed as part of the Feldversuche residency on Kleine Stadt Farm in Vienna in 2024. The original version featured a disintegrating costume made from river scum sewn with horse hair; real horses exiting the river courtesy of 'Verein Movement' as well as a sound piece/falling of a log/night disappearing/swimming with the incredible support of the curators and co-artists on the residency.
New iterations have been performed in the Grand Union Canal in Digbeth (see above via Grand Union Gallery) and next to Bournville Train station as part of South Birmingham Studios Open Studios in June 2025.
A version of the text was performed at the launch of Aqueous Humours Fluid Ground at Matt's Gallery in 2025.
A published version of this work will be available via Feldversuche in 2025.
images (anti-clockwise from left): scum!!!, Mixed media performance with mud (scum), river, dead tree, horses; Feldversuche, Vienna, 2024, video still, video by Philipp Pess
South Birmingham Studios, parking lot //Grand Union Canal, Bournville Station, Birmingham, 2025, photo Alis Oldfield