(para)site, zack mennell, 2022. Images courtesy of Thames Festival Trust. Photo by Milo Robinson.
a project by zack mennell
In (para)site, artist zack mennell continues their exploration of difficult ecological and personal legacies through performance and workshop activities.
Further Information
Press: abstrakt@abstraktpublicity.co.uk
Producing: producing@futureritual.co.uk
Workshop Call Out
Contaminated Materials:
performing our difficult histories
This free workshop, led by Thurrock-raised artist zack mennell, explores how we can transform items, objects and materials which carry negative associations. Using Live Art and performance art practices, we’ll look at how we can imbue these ‘contaminated materials’ with new meanings that foster recovery and suggest new relationships.
In zack’s own work, they have transformed their correspondence with medical institutions and the Department of Work and Pensions. These documents have been cut-up and reorganised, dissolved in the Thames, and recorded and re-recorded onto cassette tapes until the words disappear.
Care & Facilitation
This workshop should not be understood as a therapeutic process. zack and their team commit to leading the process with artistic and human compassion but the facilitation of this workshop is not a mode of psychological or professional care.
We will co-agree practices of accountability and care within the workshop during the online welcome meeting, but we ask that you take ultimate responsibility for your own psychological wellbeing and for the ideas and experiences you bring into the room. When you think about working with ‘contaminated materials’ and difficult histories, we ask that you consider whether it is responsible and safe for you to do so.
Who are we looking for?
- This workshop is for people aged 18+.
- You should be interested in creativity and arts - no professional experience is needed.
- You live, work, study or have strong connections to Thurrock (or wider South Essex).
- We strongly encourage people who have experienced marginalisation to take part. This might include LGBTQ+, neurodivergent and disabled people, global majority people and people with experience of migration, and people from lower social economic backgrounds or who identify as working class.
(para)site, zack mennell, 2022. Images courtesy of Thames Festival Trust. Photo by Milo Robinson.
Key Dates
Participants must be available for the following dates:
- Online Welcome Meeting: 12th July, 7pm - 8pm
- Full Day Workshop: 19th July, 11am - 5pm
Access and Participation
We actively welcome applications from individuals with access needs. A small access budget is available to help accommodate these requirements. If you have any questions or would like to discuss your specific needs before applying, please don’t hesitate to get in touch via email - producing@futureritual.co.uk
Additionally, we can offer all participants £10 travel expenses and will provide lunch.
Join the Workshop
We are collecting expressions of interest for this opportunity via this form. Thank you for considering being part of Title.
We will be accepting expressions of interest on a rolling basis until 30th of May. We aim to respond to all expressions of interest by the 13th of June.
About the project
Through (para)site: a sea change, zack will present a series of new performances in South Essex, Liverpool and London. These works explore the resonances between zack’s experiences of madness and institution and the wider climate of political hostility to disabled, neurodivergent, queer and working-class communities.
“All my work starts from a state of compulsion”, says zack. “It is an ongoing attempt to reconcile images, words, and sensations that haunt me. I research intensely, diving into dense academic papers and books while bathing in a wash of images, material, sound, and place. This allows work to emerge that is not directly recognisable as being about but is intrinsically entangled with the knowledge and culture of my topics of enquiry. My work is driven by this unwieldy need to connect with a viewer in an uncommon space, trying to find commonality in this tension and opening ourselves to the uncanny experiences that arise.”
Rat Park, London
In London, zack is an artist-in-residence during Duckie’s Rat Park, a programme of weekly gatherings taking place in February, that offer a meditation on intimacy, pleasure, chemsex, cruising and shame. zack will develop a new performance each week, deepening their exploration of toxicity, trauma and difficult legacies.> Duckie: Rat Park, February 2025
Rage Reactor, Liverpool
zack has been awarded a Live Art commission by DaDaFest International to realise a new work as part of their 40th anniversary festival ‘RAGE: A Quiet Riot’. zack’s work Rage Reactor is an installation and performance work which poetically entangles the traumatic legacy of the nuclear family with the trauma that the civil nuclear industry enacts on the land. Rage Ractor has been commissioned by DaDaFest International and will premiere at Bluecoat (Liverpool).
> DaDaFest Announcement
> Bluecoat Performances, Liverpool, 22nd & 23rd March 2025
> DaDaFest Announcement
> Bluecoat Performances, Liverpool, 22nd & 23rd March 2025
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The decommissioned Bradwell nuclear power station, Essex. Photo by zack mennell, 2024.
zack mennell
zack mennell (b. 1994) is a self-taught artist using writing, photography, performance, and film to explore queerness and neurodiversity in relation to presence and visibility.
The first iteration of their ongoing project (para)site was commissioned by Thames Festival Trust and presented at VSSL studio in 2022 as part of Totally Thames Festival and Deptford X. The series has seen zack undertake psycho-geographic explorations of London’s waterways - scavenging for material residues of the city’s industrial past and offering strange performative interventions in ramshackle places. This body of work explores the resonances between zack’s experiences of madness and institutionalisation, the wider climate of political hostility to disabled, neurodivergent, queer and working class communities, and urban histories and ecologies.
The first iteration of their ongoing project (para)site was commissioned by Thames Festival Trust and presented at VSSL studio in 2022 as part of Totally Thames Festival and Deptford X. The series has seen zack undertake psycho-geographic explorations of London’s waterways - scavenging for material residues of the city’s industrial past and offering strange performative interventions in ramshackle places. This body of work explores the resonances between zack’s experiences of madness and institutionalisation, the wider climate of political hostility to disabled, neurodivergent, queer and working class communities, and urban histories and ecologies.
zack is a member of the Liberty Advisory Group, which provides collective oversight of Liberty, the Mayor of London’s flagship festival for D/deaf, disabled and neurodivergent artists. They are a studio holder at Triangle LGBTQ+ Cultural Centre, a member of the Metal New Artist Network, and the Working Class Creatives Database. They are also a member of TOMA (The Other MA) 2024/25 cohort, a professional artist development programme based in Southend-on-Sea. zack was granted an Arts Council England DYCP grant in November 2023, and has recently finished New Dialogues, a visual art creative research commission for the British Art Network and Outside In exploring archives of art created historically in mental health settings.
> Future Ritual: zack mennell
> Whistling as the Night Calls: collaborative photographic works
> Whistling as the Night Calls (editions)
> www.zackmennell.com
(para)site, zack mennell, 2022. Images courtesy of Thames Festival Trust. Photo by Milo Robinson.