Biological Determinism — Evolutionary Inertia, Constraints — Future Folklore Available to Purchase

This experimental entry splices descriptions of artist Justin Shoulder’s evening-length proscenium solo Carrion with an interview with curator and scholar Ashley Ferro-Murray. In Carrion, Shoulder inhabits a larger-than-life stuffed tardigrade costume. They call their decade-long performative practice a future folklore, in which one artist, a bird, and a tardigrade become together. The tardigrade is one of the world’s most resilient animals, a phylum that mimics death so closely that it evades it. Shoulder’s proposal for a more stripped-down form of artifice-less-ness—the naked-body antennae that carries the weight of rock memories, for example—performatively carves space for hybrid bodies that bear imprints.