We are proud to screen ‘The Feast’ a new film by Alicja Rogalska, inspired by conversations with our academics about climate catastrophe.
Alicja Rogalska’s latest work documents a metabolic feast, a dinner ritual commemorating the end of humanity’s reliance on fossil fuels. It takes place sometime in the future when humans and their companion species harvest and distribute surplus energy generated by their metabolism and movements.
Around the table, the dinner guests assembled consume fossil fuels and other substances once used in energy production, including coal, crude oil, diesel, lithium and uranium. While doing so, they discuss the strategies employed by society in the past to wean themselves from dirty energy and avert climate catastrophe.
Alicja Rogalska is an interdisciplinary artist based in London and Berlin and working internationally. Her practice is research-led and focuses on social structures and the political subtext of the everyday. She mostly works in specific contexts making situations, performances, videos and installations in collaboration with other people to collectively search for emancipatory ideas for the future.
At Essex, she was artist-in-residence with the Faculty of Social Sciences and collaborated with academics whose research engaged with issues surrounding climate catastrophe, including Professor Jason Glynos, Professor Mark Harvey, Professor Linsey McGoey and Professor Colin Samson
This residency has been made possible through funding from the Arts Council of England and working in partnership with Focal Point Gallery.
