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Witch Please: Awakening

a posthuman performance party

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Sat 18 June 2022 // 20:00 (cancelled)

Tickets: £8/10/12

a hard frost killed all things delicate and various. our masters threw poison grain into the feeding frenzy, as we pecked and clawed at each other. we lost count of the bellyaches, the nightmares, the distance and the hardness, visitations by the spirit of scarcity, of war, which took up residence in our dens. we became sick of clenching, tired of this hall of mirrors, shattered, hurling bodies against unfeeling barriers, our fur matted and slick with our own blood, the blood of those who were once friends, lovers.

and in feeling our wounding, our desperation, and vowing not to abandon that animal: we learnt how to rest. how to defeat fear. and in snuffling for crumbs we learnt to taste, to chew, to spit and – only when the meat is Good – to swallow.

and now, twinkling, fluorescent blackness of feral eyes that See: this icy prison is melting. it was always transparent, especially so when one’s nose is pressed against it. now it is liquid, insubstantial, so obviously permeable by inner fire. behind this illusory barrier: beneath the parched earth: a wyrd web regrowing, making itself indispensible, learning its way of being: here – now – this. unconstrained by fantasies and the endless hungry howling of unfinished business, unwell ancestors. what kind of being must I become, in order to live wholeheartedly? what kind of darkness do I need, in order to show my light?

“april is the cruellest month” grunts the crocus, heaving the frozen ground aside, all white hot sensitivity and gurning, roiling LIFE that turns to death in an instant. He is standing over you, casting a shadow in which little can grow, and certainly no hope for your utter childishness and stupidity: did I not tell you that for each of your thousand children nine hundred and ninety nine would be killed? how DARE this bright green affront to the peace and slumber of winter be electrified by His rising? things were under control, creaking and cobwebbed, the horrible safety of rigor mortis. how DARE you live?

to You: realise, in this confrontation with the gentle irrepressible terrible strength of the germinating seed, the tectonic plate, the relentless force of irrepressible nature – oak king slices through holly, as holly did oak not long before – it is death and it is life and you are renewed, renewal, for now. this life is a charnel ground, this life is a wildflower meadow, this life is a compost heap, a stinking lily, a phallic mushroom. rise up and cast off the slumber of winter. you are the first of your kind. we love you. we miss you. welcome in the terror of the new with us. we are AWAKENING.

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we've waited. under cover of darkness, submerged in swampy muck, in half-seen half-imagined visions, through heat haze and incense. our eyes peep through the cracks in consensus reality. we cuddle up together in the nooks and crannies of the collective psyche. dread interlopers in polite society. we are the freaks, the demi-gods, sacred, profane, disgusting, ecstatic, unearthly, vile, juicy, tacky... we are what we are. does our wildness feel like a threat? do our bodies repulse you? YUCK!

WITCH PLEASE is a party
WITCH PLEASE is a ritual action
WITCH PLEASE is an invitation
to be your best self, to be your worst nightmare
to unbridle your desires, queer your human frame and embrace the mystery
to dance with the archetypes and surrender to the fates and the furies
faux fur and face paint, lace and leather, infinite light bursting from vibrant matter
let's concoct a queer cosmology, a mythos for the pandrogynous
we are ecological beings, swimming not drowning in the waters of psyche

expect occult-flavoured happenings, ritual performance and cosmic disco. prepare to participate, and dress to distress.