Duration: 45 Min, language: ENG
ЯƎSPAWN is a “host-assisted” solo staged as an apologia*.
The work is a blasphemy against the worldview shaped by bioessentialist and trans-exclusionary radical feminist (TERF) theory, which frames sex, gender, and identity as dark sites where contamination, invasion, and demonic influence are imagined to perpetually lurk.
Against the backdrop of an ongoing systematic persecution campaign propagated by conservative, feminist forces who firmly believe in “gender terrorism” (like “radical gender ideology”) and “Elite Gender Inversion” (EGI), the performance embodies a central historical figure in the historical emergence of these theories. This figure is the “necrophilic invader.”
ЯƎSPAWN attempts to follow the necrophilic invader to its fatal breaking point. If the TERF is right; if these “surgically sired” monsters invade men’s and women’s “pure” bodies; if they are a diabolic “respawn” of Hermeticism––an “esoteric” school of thought often interpreted as closely tied to the phenomena of alchemy, necromancy, androgyny and hermaphroditism––, then ЯƎSPAWN insists on carrying logics such as Mary Daly’s to their ultimate conclusion.
*The Latin apologia can be traced back to the Greek verb apologeîsthai, meaning “to speak in defense; defend oneself.” Plato’s Apology of Socrates stands as one of the earliest extant examples of this rhetorical mode of oration.
Directed and written by Ruby Nilsson
Performer: Liza Tegel
Voice-over: Ruby Nilsson
Video and animation: Jacob Habinc
Costume design: Fredda Berg
Make-up/Special effects: Emma Eastop
Light design: Will Zawistowski
String score: Aase Nielsen
Sound design: Hannes Ferm