Our Lady of Rot

We find ourselves in a decrepit world, facing a giant, decaying corpse with a fleshy mouth and a pair of lungs attached to a swathe of pipes. As she claps, the pipes humm and her lungs will with air. She tells us that decay is so all-consuming that even flesh itself has become a rarity. It's now everyone's duty to use what little they have left. She is uniquely cursed with still having enough flesh to speak – a huge responsibility which burdens her greatly. As she claps again, we follow the pipes and find the source of her voice, a workroom of bellows powered by smaller, almost completely bare skeletons. Her monologue grows more frantic and demanding, until the inevitable occurs – a work accident that cripples one of her workers. Intent on punishment, but fearing a public outcry, she covertly scrapes what little flesh the worker has left and discards him to the pile of other bones. As she turns to us and claps again, it seems it's up to us to maintain or break the status quo.

Director’s statement
OUR LADY OF ROT explores themes of exploitation, overconsumption and socioeconomic inequality through mediums of flesh, rot and breath. Grift and crunch culture have made destroying our own bodies through overwork not only the standard, but a point of pride. At the same time, our still relatively comfortable lifestyle hinges on exploitation of the third world. It's unclear which of the two main characters we should feel more connected to.

To follow the themes of decay and overuse, I built most of the puppets and scenography from waste material. I was especially fascinated with discarded electronics – objects that would be inconceivable treasures to our pre-industrial ancestors, but aren't even worth to recycle to us.

The other star of the show is microcrystalinic wax, used to create uncannily fleshy textures of puppets and replace clay as an animation material.

Puppets themselves show signs of wear and tear, wires and flesh, inorganic and organic decaying together.