whore/parasite is a durational ritual-performance informed by post-humanist materialist theories, hydrofeminism and indigenous knowledge that employs sound, movement, and wearable sculpture. The tongue of the nahua interpreter La Malinche, the mouth of the ancient fish, the Pacific Lamprey, L.A river water, natural dying and concrete are woven in this ritual that gathers stories of extinction, colonization, resistance and collaborative survival. The voices of two historically neglected creatures, one considered a whore, the other a parasite, return through friction acompanied by the sound of petrified water, to reopen our watery imagination and spawn spaces where the boundary between human and more-than-human entities is constantly blurred, expanded and inhabited.

whore/parasite, durational ritual-performance, 2 hours. Defective cotton fabric recuperated from a sweat shop in L.A.’s fashion district dyed with red cabbage, elderberry, iron mordant and tanic acid, concrete mixed with L.A River water, metal screws, and metal ladder. whore/parasite was presented during the performance Festival Irrational Exhibits 13 in Los Angeles, on October 2024. Photography by Pistor Orendain.