From microbial drag spectacle to everyday ecological citizenship
Flowing into existing community venues – climate cafes, community centres, local gatherings – bringing microbial drag interventions, toolkits and pooling practices into spaces where people already are. Embedding radical generosity into the everyday.
From Friday to Sunday (25 – 27 July) we ran FOUR tours, and hosted around 80 humans with our infectious blend of art & science. Thank you for everyone who came to the Liverpool Cholera tours! Below are some memorable snaps from the event. Do you have any you want to share? Please send them through – we’d love to see the tour from your perspective too!
Photos by Tracy Simpson, Tim Brunsden
E. coli has been spending a lot of time in Margate recently and local residents are getting sick of her. She has a reputation for being toxic. But is she misunderstood? Join us for an unforgettable walking tour and performance along Margate’s coast as we hear E. coli’s side of the story.
Thursday 21 & Friday 22 August E.coli is brought to slimy life by multi-award nominated writer and performer Laura Wyatt O’Keeffe (soho theatre, round house, latitude festival) in microbial drag. The tour is a queer, joyful exploration of Margate’s relationship with microorganisms, provoking new perspectives on the sewage crisis and our relationship with non-human life.
(more…)To celebrate Margate Pride, Flow.Walk.Drag has co-curated a pop-up exhibition at Margate’s Crab Museum – ECO-DRAG.
Come learn about local drag performances that take on environmental issues, namely Southern Water’s persistent sewage spills. Learn about the impact on public health and the characteristics of one notorious bacteria that comes to town with heavy rain and sewage overflows: E. coli.
Margate’s ornate, subterranean queen Shelly Grotto has previously embodied Southern Water and the Ocean to raise awareness of corporate sewage pollution. Shelly explores why drag eco-activism is so powerful and offers her top-tips for drag eco-activism.
The exhibition is open 11-5 until Sunday 10th August.
And at 4pm on the final day, come and join a speed-dating event with E. coli. You can win a spot to go on a date with this notorious, mysterious, misunderstood bacteria. Sign up to win a slot here!
A Contagion of Transformation
This project represents a new strain of social research – one that refuses to be quarantined in ivory towers. By embodying a microorganism through drag performance, the tour challenges audiences to think differently about bodies, boundaries and belonging in urban spaces.
The 90-minute experience promises regular stops at points of intrigue, where scientific fact meets theatrical fiction, and where Liverpool’s past contaminations illuminate present-day struggles for reclaiming connected waterways, healthy communities and environmental justice.
Symptoms Include: Uncontrollable Urge to Question Everything
Audiences should prepare for side effects including – heightened awareness of water politics, sudden appreciation for drag as a research method, and an infectious desire to see their city through microbial eyes. Warning: this tour may cause permanent changes to how you live through Liverpool’s streets, contagion, waterways and the invisible networks that connect us all.
The tour’s unique blend of social research and unapologetic performance creates something genuinely unprecedented – a theatrical vaccination against ignorance that’s as entertaining as it is enlivening.
(more…)What Happens When a Deadly Disease Gets a Drag Makeover and Takes Over the Streets of Liverpool?
Cholera Walking Tour is an Infectious Blend of Drag, Science and Environmental Justice. Prepare for an outbreak of a different kind, as Liverpool’s streets will be contaminated with creativity as drag artist Auntie Climax embodies Cholera herself, leading audiences through the city’s hidden waterways and forgotten histories in the most provocative walking tour that will ever take over your body and imagination.
“We’re not just performing history,” explains Liverpool Hope University Senior Lecturer Annalaura Alifuoco. “We’re diagnosing present-day symptoms of environmental injustice and offering a different kind of treatment – one that centres collective wellbeing, communal knowledge and joyful resistance.”
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