What Is Garbage Fest, you ask?
during the pandemic, three cascadian trash puppeteers who were planning a tour together decided to upgrade their tour to garbage-fest, which became a bonanza of activities in five cities over two weeks, starting in bellingham, corvallis and portland, and ending in seattle and olympia. since then, the festival has traveled to bristol and london in the UK, new york city, new orleans, wellington and auckland new zealand, and melbourne australia.
a typical garbage fest gathers in an abandoned place covered in rubbish. it includes workshops on building trash monuments to worship and destroy, carnival games like pin the garbage on the garbage and the trash toss, abject/animist puppetry construction & doing; costume assemblage with a trashion show or pageant, panels on the ontology and epistemology of trash; a bevy of deranged trashy avant-garde performances and rituals, often a night parade, and much more. each garbage fest is different and unique in its circumstance and unfolding, and anything can happen.
garbage fest is not about recycling, sustainability, or any of this cynical neoliberal nonsense. we worship trash and are trying to connect with it in a deep way.
you don't need much to put on a garbage fest. all you really need is trash. some props we have found especially helpful over the years include string, tape, shopping carts, chalk, paint, cardboard, plastic, long beams/poles, and especially community.
you can purchase a copy of the second garbage fest book, with submissions in eighteen languages from around the world, published by aoteatoa's rebel press here: [LINK]
| Footage from the first 'fest in B'ham under athe bridge. That shore wore a doozy. | GFs in Bristol, London UK & NYC, starting with that ingenius sigil Zai made in PDX | an errant post-doc Trashy not-happening opera after the festivities in OLY |
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for more information or to get involved, please contact garbagefestnorthwest [at] gmail [dot] com
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