Ashton Phillips
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DirtBath (Pure Filth Machine)
2023
contaminated municipal mulch, pollution-consuming mycorrhizal fungi, blue and pink oyster mushrooms, sunflower and wheatgrass seeds, stuffed in burlap sacks, bound and penetrated with black vinyl hosing, and stacked in leaky cast iron bathtub, under UV “g
dimensions variable
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DirtBath (Pure Filth Machine) (2)
2023
contaminated municipal mulch, pollution-consuming mycorrhizal fungi, blue and pink oyster mushrooms, sunflower and wheatgrass seeds, stuffed in burlap sacks, bound and penetrated with black vinyl hosing, and stacked in leaky cast iron bathtub, under UV “g
dimensions variable
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DirtBath (Pure Filth Machine) (3)
2023
contaminated municipal mulch, pollution-consuming mycorrhizal fungi, blue and pink oyster mushrooms, sunflower and wheatgrass seeds, stuffed in burlap sacks, bound and penetrated with black vinyl hosing, and stacked in leaky cast iron bathtub, under UV “g
dimensions variable
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Plastic Bodies (Exhibits) (2)
2023
inkjet print of plastic patents and anti-trans legislation, egg tempera, mycorrhizal fungal spores, mineral oxide pigments, activated charcoal, and “dirty job” paint marker on plexi, mounted on routed plywood shelf
48 x 144” x 9”
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Plastic Bodies (Exhibits)
2023
inkjet print of plastic patents and anti-trans legislation, egg tempera, mycorrhizal fungal spores, mineral oxide pigments, activated charcoal, and “dirty job” paint marker on plexi, mounted on routed plywood shelf
48 x 144” x 9”
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Plastic Bodies (Exhibits) (3)
2023
inkjet print of plastic patents and anti-trans legislation, egg tempera, mycorrhizal fungal spores, mineral oxide pigments, activated charcoal, and “dirty job” paint marker on plexi, mounted on routed plywood shelf
48 x 144” x 9”
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Womb/Tomb/Boom (Passages) (2)
2023
synthetic fur and violet vinyl textiles, cast light and shadow
variable
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Womb/Tomb/Boom - A Refuge for Plastic Bodies
2021
multisensory, interspecies installation of metamorphosing plastic bodies, including partially consumed styrofoam, live mealworms, live darkling beetles, egg tempera, mineral oxide pigments, handsewn mosquito netting, pine, faux leather, aluminum flashing,
room-sized installation (15 x 20 x 18')
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Womb/Tomb/Boom - A Refuge for Plastic Bodies (2)
2021
multisensory, interspecies installation of metamorphosing plastic bodies, including partially consumed styrofoam, live mealworms, live darkling beetles, egg tempera, mineral oxide pigments, handsewn mosquito netting, pine, faux leather, aluminum flashing,
room-sized installation (15 x 20 x 18')
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Womb/Tomb/Boom - A Refuge for Plastic Bodies (3)
2021
multisensory, interspecies installation of metamorphosing plastic bodies, including partially consumed styrofoam, live mealworms, live darkling beetles, egg tempera, mineral oxide pigments, handsewn mosquito netting, pine, faux leather, aluminum flashing,
room-sized installation (15 x 20 x 18')
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Womb/Tomb/BooM (WormLight) (2)
2023
plywood and violet acrylic sheet, stereo cable, municipal mulch, mealworm sheds and frass, partially consumed styrofoam, partially consumed wildflowers
(3) 24 x 48 x 32"
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Womb/Tomb/BooM (WormLight)
2023
plywood and violet acrylic sheet, stereo cable, municipal mulch, mealworm sheds and frass, partially consumed styrofoam, partially consumed wildflowers
(3) 24 x 48 x 32"
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Womb/Tomb/BooM (WormLight) (3)
2023
plywood and violet acrylic sheet, stereo cable, municipal mulch, mealworm sheds and frass, partially consumed styrofoam, partially consumed wildflowers
(3) 24 x 48 x 32"
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Womb/Tomb/BooM (Open Worm Mic and Mending Performances)
2023
interspecies performance
Statement
Womb/Tomb/BooM invites human visitors to share space, air, and flesh with styrofoam-metabolizing beetle larvae and the plastic waste they inhabit and consume. Wherever possible, barriers between human, insect, and plastic have been removed to create a shared sensory wormspace of metamorphosis-friendly light, sound, and material.
Utilizing cast purple and magenta light emanating from overhead vessels of contaminated earth, insect waste, and plastic; a sonic field of consumption and metamorphosis resonating from the walls and ceiling of the chamber; a collection of styrofoam beds and benches that humans can touch and sit upon; and an assemblage of architectonic styrofoam towers inhabited by a colony of more than 10,000 mealworm-beetles, Womb/Tomb/Boom positions the “viewer” as a part of a larger system of contaminating repair that consumes and metabolizes them as much as they consume and metabolize it.
Situated in a moment of unprecedented de facto and de jure animus against past/present/and future trans youth, Womb/Tomb/Boom also embodies an aesthetics and something like an erotics of pollution, perpetual metamorphosis, disorientation, abjection, and (dis)repair to construct a speculative world of (dis)comfort as queer refuge. This world depends on the performativity of the heteronormative fear of darkness, contamination, and disassociation to disturb - and maybe even repel - the comfortable, while comforting the disturbed in an obscuring and pleasure-oriented embrace of synthetic purple light, fake fur curtains, foam-as-marble resting surfaces, and perpetual ASMR-like chewing.
In an adjacent 3-sided room, DirtBath (Pure Filth Machine) holds a living heap of muddy biomorphic burlap sacks, bound together with black vinyl hosing inside a cast iron tub, and stuffed with polluted mulch and pollution-consuming fungi and seeds: a performance of queer vitality and imperfect repair emerging from material impurity, interspecies contamination, and “filth.”
A plexi-inscribed “Statement of Fact” hangs beside this DirtBath like a monument to queer knowledge, containing more than 70 nonlinear “facts,” culled from 3 years worth of embodied research, legible only through their cast shadow and only with considerable care. A collection of layered and modular “Exhibits” activate the third wall of this chamber, with layers of fungal, mealworm, and human marks on moveable plexi panels, obscuring and remaking the toxic legal documents mounted on the walls behind them, including excerpts from historic styrofoam patents, the Toxic Substances Control Act, and recent anti-trans legislation.
Like Susan Stryker’s anarchic trans womb and Karen Barad’s quantum-field-as-lively-void, then, Womb/Tomb/BooM’s speculative world vibrates in generative negation: both queer tomb - where received structures, hierarchies, and norms, pollution and the “polluted”, can come to be undone; and queer womb - where these undone pieces may find rest, protection, and space
to recombine, forming new, less pure, bodies, animating new, more plastic, worlds.
Studio Art (Summer Low Residency MFA) Students
Katia Meisinger - not exhibiting