Briturn, 2017

Peformance, Brnó Check Republic.

At the time Britain voted to leave the EU, I was living in London. I was invited to take part in Briturn, a weekend of performances, music, and events in Brno responding to the referendum result.

My performance explored the emotional split surrounding the vote as most Londoners didn’t vote out, the tension between celebration and collapse. I moved through the space in a state that shifted from euphoric to dark and unhinged. Balloons filled the room. Laughter that sounded like crying. Glitter spilled onto the floor as I walked with a paper bag over my head labeled Bipolar.

At one point, I opened a box of pins and offered it to the audience. They immediately began piercing the balloons, bursting them one by one like puncturing a false idea. The gesture was both playful, destructive and noisy, a collective dismantling disguised as festivity.

Assistants ran around the space, generating sounds that hovered between joy and chaos, further blurring the line between happiness and madness.

The performance embodied the two opposing emotional realities surrounding the vote triumph and despair existing simultaneously, indistinguishable in their intensity.