AGAINST WITCH WASHING

performance · choreographic video installation · manifesto

This project is dedicated to all the people who, every day, are killed or lose their territories in defence of life.

Choreography for one spectator, video installation, fabric booth, turntable, copper furniture, refrigerator, obsidian mirror, mixture of plants for burning, and Flying Cream preparation.

Anyone experiencing this choreographic video installation receives a genital fumigation and a dose of Flying Cream. The gesture reminds us that we have not yet been completely whitewashed, and that the obsidian mirror placed before our genitals continues to offer an image of what resists genocide.

“Witch” and “witchcraft”, which have become fashionable phenomena in recent years, are part of a process of washing/whitening, with a homogenising tendency and easy marketing, while witch hunts continue. This violence is directed against Indigenous peoples, social leaders and farmers who defend their ecosystems and whose ways of life oppose extractivism and the standardisation of the world.

This device for trans-species pleasure in public space is proposed as a political experiment.

Music: Marco Antonio Suárez Cifuentes
Lighting: Jean Marc Chomaz
General assistance: Viviane Ravier
Technical assistance: Antoine Garcia — LadHyX
Video, concept and direction: aniara rodado
Flying Cream and herbal mixture: aniara rodado, Société Genialis
Production: Chaire arts & sciences — École Polytechnique & École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs — PSL, with the support of the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation; Antre-Peaux.