The Ethics of Witnessing [ROT]

Fetishini with Ys Blue, Chloe Jaques, Kat Lang

“[We] all live with this particular vulnerability, a vulnerability, a vulnerability to the other that is part of bodily life, a vulnerability to a sudden address from elsewhere we cannot preempt.” [1]

The Ethics of Witnessing [ROT] scrutinises the decaying ecosystem of the human body through a spatial anatomy that pulses, bleeds and breaks down. Channelling the aesthetics of horror and drawing on the grotesqueness of bodily transformation and visceral performance, The Ethics of Witnessing [ROT] addresses ecological collapse using the metaphor of anatomical demise. Each performer embodies a disintegrating bodily system: blood, liver and skin. But here they are rendered toxic and excessive, corrupted by the same forces that poison the earth. The internal becomes external, the body becomes landscape, with each organ acting as a site of failure. The Ethics of Witnessing [ROT] proposes the ugliness of collapse as sacred, and evokes a ritual mourning of planetary degradation where the body is rotting with it.

[1] Butler, Judith. 2004. Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. London: Verso.

CONTENT GUIDANCE

The Ethics of Witnessing [ROT] is a performance artwork that contains nudity, bodily fluids, body horror, sexual references and themes some may find disturbing.

This event is FREE but TICKETED.

There will be NO admittance under the age of 18, or without a ticket.

NO PHOTOGRAPHY

Phone cameras will be stickered upon entry.

Upon arriving to the gallery, our host and security will brief you with our code of conduct for the evening (also below). Failure to comply with our code of conduct will see your prompt removal from the gallery.

OUR COMMITMENT

Enjoy is an artist-led gallery that supports experimental, critical, and risk-taking practices. We are committed to providing a space where artists, audiences, and communities are treated with respect and care.

Some of our performances and exhibitions may involve nudity, bodily fluids, personal or political subject matter, or intense emotional content. We welcome discomfort, but not harm. This Code of Conduct exists to ensure everyone involved is informed, safe, and empowered:

Respect and Consent

Do not touch performers or artworks unless invited to.
Do not photograph or film the performance unless explicitly permitted.
Respect personal space—your own and others’.
Participation (if invited) is always optional.

Triggering or Sensitive Content

Content warnings will be clearly displayed.
If at any point you feel overwhelmed, you may leave and return discreetly.
You may speak to staff for support, information, or debriefing.

Accessibility

If you have specific access needs, please inform staff—we are here to support you.
We aim to provide seating, quiet space, and access alternatives where possible.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

FETISHINI is a queer, non-binary performance artist whose work navigates the borders of abjection, desire, and identity. Rooted in lived experiences of dysphoria, neurodivergence, and queer embodiment, their practice explores how we define ourselves by rejecting what is considered dirty, shameful, taboo, or threatening to bodily and psychic coherence.
Beginning their creative journey as a drag artist, Fetishini’s work has evolved into performance that entangles body horror, fetish, and emotional intensity. Navigating the slippery terrain where desire and revulsion coexist, Fetishini confronts sanitised cultural narratives about bodily coherence and identity.
Their performances are ritualistic encounters with what we are meant to disown—staging intimacy with shame, fetish, body horror, and emotional excess. In doing so, they offer a kind of exposure therapy through art: not to cure, but to coexist with what we are told to hide.

YS BLUE is an artist based in Tāmaki Makaurau, practicing within the realms of object making, poetry, performance, and the expanded field of craft. Their practice is driven by a material obsession that aspires to undress taboos, interrogate subsumation, and resist commodification. Often working between the liturgical and the pornographic, Blue undoes the binds of function, discipline, and exchange. Blue completed a diploma in Art and Craft (Ceramics) from Hungry Creek Art and Craft School in 2017 and a Bachelor of Visual Arts (Sculpture) from AUT in 2020.

CHLOE JAQUES is a Pōneke based artist whose practice explores the impact and power of the physical self. She is an actor, dancer and performer that creates abstract and thoughtful work in a low maintenance, high energy style.
Chloe has worked under Dame Gaylene Preston for the New Zealand Film Commision, developed her sold out solo show EAT ME for the Tahi Festival: NZ Festival of Solo Performance, premiered the contemporary dance show MANUFACT at the 2022 Fringe Festival and developed The Bed We Sleep Upon as apart of Playstation Gallery’s monthly performance programme. Chloe has also been a regional & national assessor for Shakespeare Globe Centre New Zealand’s University of Otago Sheilah Winn Shakespeare Festival. She is an acting graduate of Toi Whakaari: NZ Drama School and has most recently concluded an artist residency with Barbarian Productions and The Performance Arcade 2024.

KAT LANG is an artist based in Tāmaki Makaurau. Their practice indulges a socially relational realm, using the memetic recontextualisation of physical and cultural material to talk through social space. Lang has focused their engagement in gallery context on amputating space, privileging immersive and auto-destructive art, rather than stand-alone objects. Lang constructs with an intent to pull at the threads of failure, meaning/meaninglessness, the sensory and its emotional appendages and the harvesting of sentimental data.

Contact the host of The Ethics of Witnessing [ROT]