Transcript
visions from the end of the world that started after the world ended

compost your shit
bask in each other’s sweat
swap your spit with abandon
drink your worm waste
release your juices
drag your body into the sunlight
if you like it then lick it
munch it up in the morning dew
dig a hole and bury yourself in it
take a lower kind of view
spend some time with the bugs in the dirt baths
keep watch on the swamp from the knees 

Alx cast the swamp in rubber
(may every tree stump be a plaything for pleasure) 

save your electrolytes in a plastic cup
drink your tears as tea
stick your tongue in every hole
take your meals right from the stalk
bury your coins
watch the rust turn the dirt red
throw the earth on your naked body and cry

hurrah I am made of money

swap your exhaustion for
sedation / sedition 

make a new kind of time.

“drag your body into the sunlight / dig a hole and bury yourself in it” 

Delivered via distorted and whispering proxy, Walden sends a biocentric message from the swamp: “take a lower kind of view / spend some time with the bugs in the dirt baths.” The artist’s instructions show how we might be more queerly in touch with our bodies and environments, opening up new points of connection to the more-than-human world.

Romily Alice Walden is a transdisciplinary artist whose work centres a queer, disabled perspective on the fragility of the body. Their practice questions contemporary Western society's relationship with care, tenderness and vulnerability in relation to our bodies, our communities and our ecosystem. Walden is interested in our ability (and failure) to navigate physicality, interdependency and fallibility both communally and individually. Recent work has shown at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art: Newcastle, Hebel Am Uffer: Berlin, SOHO20: New York, Kunstinstituut Melly: Rotterdam, and Tate Exchange: Tate Modern: London. In 2019 Walden was a Shandaken Storm King resident and will be resident at Wysing Arts Centre and HAU Berlin in 2021. Since 2019, Walden has been a fellow of the Universität der Künste Berlin

Graduate School and Berlin Centre for Advanced Studies in Arts and Sciences.

ASL Interpretation