Attachment: 672 days by Jess Holly Bates

A sensory essay on post-partum plenitude: a durational performance with oranges.

Jess Holly Bates hand-juices a pyramid of navel oranges, quietly marking each day of post-partum survival. In witnessing this simple task, you are invited to sit with the sticky, soft plenitude of life-after-birth. The room becomes thick with the funk of oranges, their insides become outsides, their corpses litter the floor. It is both a child’s birthday party and a mutual contamination. We are all sticky. We are all attached.

Content Warning: Nudity

Saturday 25 February, Durational 10:00-16:00
WEA Canterbury Hall

About

Jess Holly Bates (they/them) is a queer Pākehā artist, poet and theatre-maker working at the edges of eviscerated knowledges, whiteness and power. Performance Art highlights include Nar//Scissors (Artdego, Toi o Tamaki, 2015), co-creating Please Explain Sacred (PAWA, 2017) and performing I Don’t Understand the Question as a part of The SaVAge K’lub (Brisbane Triennale, GOMA, 2016). Their theatre work Real Fake White Dirt was published as a book of poetry (2014) with Anahera Press and has toured UK, Australia and NZ. Co-creator of two other theatre works The Offensive Nipple Show (2016) and Inheritance (2019). Their most recent work has been giving birth to Wolver (2021).