God's Anus

My creative practice combines video, performance, installation and photography. The ideas supporting it converge post-anthropocentric concepts and theories around human behaviours dictated by our denial of death. By imagining a flattened hierarchy between human and non-human I question how humans might integrate and equalise with non-human species. My work also touches on our reluctance to behave like animals – in a futile attempt to deny our mortality. These ideas are expressed through dance inspired by Butoh – an evocative and theatrical style of movement that originated in Japan in the 1950s. I am interested in revealing the invisible animal that is in all of us, dropping the human mask that we would normally keep veiled. Allowing my animal to be publicly revealed, God’s Anus (2021) is an autoethnographic work that abstracts the terror of finding blood on toilet paper and the subsequent deadening morass of chemo and radiotherapy as treatment. It uses contemporary photographic practices to illustrate our fallible animal anatomy and the temporary nature of our bodies. The title of this work references the work of social anthropologist Ernest Becker, who once described humans as “Gods with anuses." It is an uncomfortably poetic way to describe the paradox of humans seeking immortality, like gods, despite our fragile, temporary and mortal reality. He is saying we are not gods – we are flesh, bone and gastrointestinal tract.

God's Anus, 2021  

single channel video  

2440 x 2400 mm

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