On the eve of Southampton Pride on 25th August 2023, the digital drag of Tentacular Spectacular’s queer cryptids is coming to the city!
Watch as they fester in alleys and spawn a series of short films, which will be projected onto surfaces in the city. Car parks are their canvas and every wall an opportunity to exhibit. Follow the mobile cinema as it moves around the city, featuring our favourite drag critters: Lasana Shabazz, Frogb0i, Shrek666, Bonnie Bakeneko, Jenkin van Zyl and WET MESS.
Meet outside John Hansard Gallery at 9pm to start the tour. Look out for the yellow hi-vis vests.
Access: the trail will cover approximately 1km, all wheelchair accessible. The pace is fairly leisurely.
The event is free to attend and you can just turn up.
PROGRAMME OF FILMS
PIGGY – Lasana Shabazz invites you to their queer fever dream of childhood nostalgia centring gay culture. Glitter, Rainbows and Shame.
Just passing through – a Trans-fi, Sci-fi, Horror from SHREK666 This short embraces Queer DIY approaches to filmmaking & animation, experimenting with practical, VFX, AI & physical sculpted material. Scenes from Glasgow Queer culture merge with generated visions in dreamlike sequences of making and unmaking.
I am the brute – a visual analysis of the subjective and objective experience of the brutality and beauty of life on earth by Bonnie Bakeneko.
Pop to the shops by WET MESS – a short film following the drag artist as they embark on an odyssey around London in one of their trademark fantasy flesh suits. Arms so big they can’t hold them up. Arms so muscular they drag on the floor. Steroided up and yet hollow on the inside.
FROGMORPHIA – an introspection on being and feeling like the ‘other’ in society by Frogb0i.
Curtain Call (2021) by Jenkin van Zyl. Filmed on an abandoned Viking film set on a frozen shore in Iceland and continuing their attraction to narratives that reside on the borderline between paradise and hellscape, the film freefalls through the terror, excitement, panic, and anticipation of the void of self-creation.
Commucracy NOW! Follow Oozing Gloop on this epic trip, where you’ll find psychoactive solutions for psychopathetic citizens trapped behind the very screens that are there to help them communicate! From the highest to the lowest, Gloop seeks to link the universal to the particular to revive the democratic impulse and pose the communist hypothesis.
😎 Tentacular Spectacular Creature Feature – a short film developed from a series of Creature Feature Zoom workshops with nine emerging drag artists facilitated by Gloop and guest mentors, edited by NewfrontEars. The film aims to re-create Hieronymus Bosch’s cursed masterpiece through the collective creation of cursed imagery, within the cursed confines of Zoo.
Commissioned by John Hansard Gallery as part of Co-Creating Public Space. Supported by Arts Council England, Southampton City Council, University of Southampton, GO! Southampton and in partnership with Southampton Pride and Breakout Youth. Produced by Artsadmin.
