ENTANGLEMENTS OF THE APOCALYPSE is a transdisciplinary programme exploring queer and trans imaginaries of world-building in response to apocalypse(s).
Grounded in ongoing research, the programme critically reinterprets the idea of apocalypse through queer and trans lenses, actively resisting capitalist and colonial narratives that frame apocalypse as a singular or final event.
Drawing inspiration from Oxana Timofeeva’s concept of apocalypse as a cyclical and continuous condition, this project engages with apocalypse as an ongoing transformative process that shapes collective memory and artistic practices.
Drawing inspiration from Oxana Timofeeva’s concept of apocalypse as a cyclical and continuous condition, this project engages with apocalypse as an ongoing transformative process that shapes collective memory and artistic practices.
Led by independent curators and artists, the programme challenges conventional narratives around ‘the end,’ creating spaces for dialogue, experimentation, and collective expression. The programme imagines exhibition-making as an inclusive and collaborative learning process, working closely with queer communities to build spaces of resistance, care, and speculative creativity.
Through radically intimate and emergent methods, this initiative uses apocalyptic thinking as a means of envisioning alternative and transformative present and future.
Through radically intimate and emergent methods, this initiative uses apocalyptic thinking as a means of envisioning alternative and transformative present and future.
Programme
The programme invites audiences to collectively engage with post-apocalyptic thinking, queer world-building, and trans-led imaginaries that centre care, pleasure, hybridity, and embodied knowledge.
Information on participating artists and upcoming events is available HERE.
Invited collaborators to date include: Keioui Keijaun Thomas, Carefuffle Collective, Black Quantum Futurism, Catherine Hoffmann, Mijke van der Drift and Zissel Aronow, Hannah Fair, Dani d’Emilia, Bassam Issa Al-Sabah and Jennifer Mehigan, Rose Choreographic School - with more artists and contributors to be announced soon...
Credits
ENTANGLEMENTS OF THE APOCALYPSE is co-curated by Mine Kaplangı, Benjamin Sebastian, Joseph Morgan Schofield and Ash McNaughton. The programme is made possible with public funding from the National Lottery and Arts Council England.
Live performance by
Catherine Hoffmann
RSVP: 3pm, 5pm & 7:30pm - Saturday 12th of July - at VSSL Studio
Documentation of Wormhole Of Our Formation by Catherine Hoffmann at VSSL Studio as part of Deptford X. Photographed by Eda Sancakdar.
Part absurdist ritual attempting control, part elemental exorcism, WORMHOLE OF OUR FORMATION is a vertiginous road trip through collapse – mental, environmental, economic – driven by unyielding text through warped music and howling storms.
A raw, hallucinatory performance that tears through the psychic wreckage of Breakdown Britain. This is a ride into the fragmentation of the self as Tetley tea bags pile up and scrambled eggs congeal. In debt and displaced, Hoffmann charts a personal odyssey across red-alert storm zones, B&Bs, motorway shutdowns, and the disorienting landscapes of austerity and ageing.
A raw, hallucinatory performance that tears through the psychic wreckage of Breakdown Britain. This is a ride into the fragmentation of the self as Tetley tea bags pile up and scrambled eggs congeal. In debt and displaced, Hoffmann charts a personal odyssey across red-alert storm zones, B&Bs, motorway shutdowns, and the disorienting landscapes of austerity and ageing.
Armed with a wind machine, searing text, sonic chaos and ritual tremors, Hoffmann conjures a storm from the inside out.
No solace. No resolve.
Just ridiculous and horrifying monotony until a fissure – shuddering open – towards possible release.
A fizzing, visceral embodiment of crisis and catharsis, Wormhole persists. It shakes you. Bleeds. Trembles. Collapses. Re-forms.
No solace. No resolve.
Just ridiculous and horrifying monotony until a fissure – shuddering open – towards possible release.
A fizzing, visceral embodiment of crisis and catharsis, Wormhole persists. It shakes you. Bleeds. Trembles. Collapses. Re-forms.
Documentation of Wormhole Of Our Formation by Catherine Hoffmann at VSSL Studio as part of Deptford X. Photographed by Eda Sancakdar.
Documentation of Wormhole Of Our Formation by Catherine Hoffmann at VSSL Studio as part of Deptford X. Photographed by Eda Sancakdar.
Booking Information
Saturday12th July, 15.00, 17.00 & 19.30 at VSSL Studio
during the opening weekend of Deptford X.
︎︎︎ RSVPs essential - Book tickets HERE
"No sweeteners offered. This is how it is. No relief." - Diarmuid Hester
Documentation of Wormhole Of Our Formation by Catherine Hoffmann at VSSL Studio as part of Deptford X. Photographed by Eda Sancakdar.
Documentation of Wormhole Of Our Formation by Catherine Hoffmann at VSSL Studio as part of Deptford X. Photographed by Eda Sancakdar.
Buy Artworks
As compliment to the live iteration of WORMHOLE OF OUR FORMATION, Hoffmann has produced a series of six limited edition, A5 prints - available for purchase throughout the ENTANGLEMENTS OF THE APOCALYPSE programme.
Prints 1 to 6 (pictured above) are priced at £130 ea. For all sales enquiries please contact the artist directly HERE
About Catherine Hoffmann
Described as an elemental weather system Catherine takes an interdisciplinary approach to her work using text, music, choreography, video and participation - sitting in between live art, cabaret and performance. In a DIY approach and usually with absurdism she tackles personal, autobiographical material to shine a light on social issues.
Most of her work could be seen as some kind of humiliating act, revealing aspects such as shame, guilt, poverty, loss, gynaecological and mental health. She ventures into vulnerable terrain using humour and irreverence as a tool, to open up dialogue, embracing the desire for collective healing in our challenging contemporary lives.
Mainly creating solo shows as well as interactive intimate works, she also collaborates with Florence Peake and has shown in festivals, theatres, art galleries, cabaret events, on night buses, in bars and clubs throughout the UK and Europe.
In 2023 she created an immersive version of ‘Wormhole of our Formation’ using VR 360 film at UCA in Canterbury supported by ACE, the Hi3 Network, Wysing Arts centre and Cambridge Junction. In 2022 she toured ‘Cyst-er Act’ to Germany, to Summerhall at the Edinburgh fringe festival and the Southbank centre. In 2017/18 she toured the UK with ‘Free Lunch with the Stench Wench’ – a solo exploring shame in relation to class and poverty. Her texts ‘Whatever happened to the Glory Days’? And ‘Ten tips on being Feckless and Poor..’ are printed by LADA and Unbound books.
www.cathoffmann.com
Credits
WORMHOLE OF OUR FORMATION has been made possible with support from Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge Junction, Arts Council England, Battersea Arts Centre, and Hi3 Network with Screen South. In collaboration with VSSL Studio and Deptford X.
Created by: Catherine Hoffmann
Dramaturg: Eirini Kartsaki
Pearled neck brace and dress by: Lara Buffard
Choreographic Support: Florence Peake
Additional Sound Support: Lottie Poulet, Geoffrey Chambers
Lights: Marty Langthorne
Production Assistants: Ash McNaughton, Mine Kaplangi
Looking for the Rain written by: James Gabriel Leo Lavelle, Jack Leonard, Mark Lanegan, Matthew Puffet
Vocals: Catherine Hoffmann
Thanks to: Tink Flaherty, Katy Baird, Daniel Oliver, Eve Stainton, Gavin Roberts, Jules Deering, Ella Gamble, Sahara Huang, Tim Spooner, Benjamin Sebastian
Come Hell or High Femmes: The Dolls Rise - performed at The Horse Hospital (London). Produced by VSSL Studio. Video stills by Studio MaBa (Baiba Sprance & Marco Berardi). 2025.
In Thomas's new solo project - COME HELL OR HIGH FEMMES: THE DOLLS RISE - a three part film and multimedia performance, Thomas charts a post-apocalyptic geography.
Her world is lush and verdant; the artist, bathed in a sky blue dress of tulle, wanders across babbling brooks, oceans, and atop hills of fertile land.
Thomas imagines a time where the dolls — a word that, loosely, means a trans femmes so flawless and unbound they are no longer considered real — have survived a mass extinction.
Her world is lush and verdant; the artist, bathed in a sky blue dress of tulle, wanders across babbling brooks, oceans, and atop hills of fertile land.
Thomas imagines a time where the dolls — a word that, loosely, means a trans femmes so flawless and unbound they are no longer considered real — have survived a mass extinction.
Come Hell or High Femmes: The Dolls Rise - performed at The Horse Hospital (London). Produced by VSSL Studio. Video documentation by Studio MaBa (Baiba Sprance & Marco Berardi). 2025.
Why are dolls the only ones left? Perhaps, it is because trans femmes (often, but not always) are forged in nocturnality, where beauty and intelligence must learn to supersede time and space. Thomas reclaims what it means to be black in nature, forging new ways to exist in peace, joy, and healing in relation to the American landscape.
The work moves through sound, light, poetry, dance, and music as forms of resistance and healing. The choreography is based on queering landscapes, camouflage, and metamorphosis as modes of survival and transcendence for queer and trans people.
The work moves through sound, light, poetry, dance, and music as forms of resistance and healing. The choreography is based on queering landscapes, camouflage, and metamorphosis as modes of survival and transcendence for queer and trans people.
Documentation of the audience screening of: 'Come Hell or High Femmes: The Era of the Dolls - A film trilogy' at the performance of; ‘Come Hell or High Femmes: The Dolls Rise’ - at The Horse Hospital (London). Produced by VSSL Studio. Video documentation by Studio MaBa (Baiba Sprance & Marco Berardi). 2025.
Booking Information
Wednesday 13th August, 7pm at the Horse Hospital
︎︎︎ RSVPs essential - Book tickets HERE
Set in the year 2666, following a mass extinction of most human life, Come Hell or High Femmes: The Dolls Rise explores - in Thomas’ words - a “postapocalyptic world where black transfemmes have survived and are building a new universe.” - Joshua Chambers
Come Hell or High Femmes: The Dolls Rise - performed at The Horse Hospital (London). Produced by VSSL Studio. Video stills by Studio MaBa (Baiba Sprance & Marco Berardi). 2025.
Come Hell or High Femmes: The Dolls Rise - performed at The Horse Hospital (London). Produced by VSSL Studio. Video stills by Studio MaBa (Baiba Sprance & Marco Berardi). 2025.
About Keioui Keijaun Thomas
Keioui Keijaun Thomas (b.1989) is a New York-based artist. She creates live performance and multimedia installations that address the multifaceted realms of Black identity formation, encompassing affective, material and economic dimensions. Through a captivating fusion of sculpture and performance, the work explores the transient nature of the “doll”— a trans femme so flawless and unbound she is no longer considered real—as both a work in progress and a formidable force of nature.
Utilizing an array of materials such as paper, hair, sugar, rubber, tape, acrylic, water, enamel and skin to create tableaus that are intricately intertwined with her own body. Her performances combine rhapsodic layers of live and recorded voice, slipping between various modes of address, to explore the pleasures and pressures of dependency, care, and support. By centering self and communal care in real-time, Thomas’ practice aims to build bridges of understanding and community.
Thomas has presented work both nationally and internationally. She earned her Masters degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her BFA with Honors from the School of Visual Arts in New York.
See more of her recent work HERE
Credits
COME HELL OR HIGH FEMMES: THE DOLLS RISE as part of ENTANGLEMENTS OF THE APOCALYPSE is co-curated by Mine Kaplangı, Benjamin Sebastian, Joseph Morgan Schofield and Ash McNaughton. The programme is made possible with public funding from the National Lottery and Arts Council England.
DREAMING ALTERNATIVE WAYS OF EDUCATION WHILE WITNESSING APOCALYPSES (a gathering)
Private Event: Thursday the 25th of September at VSSL Studio.
Image courtesy of the Rose Choreographic School.As part of Entanglements Of The Apocalypse, VSSL Studio will host a private gathering (not open to the public) with and for the current cohort of the Rose Choreographic School.
This curated roundtable brings together a diverse array of creative/artistic-researchers - to share practices, knowledges, and speculations at the intersection of apocalyptic thinking, artistic enquiry, and experimental pedagogy.
Leading into and during the gathering, Dreaming Alternative Ways of Education While Witnessing Apocalypses will serve as both a prompt and invitation - asking how we might learn jotherwise, in other ways, while the world continues through ongoing cycles of collapse and renewal.
This curated roundtable brings together a diverse array of creative/artistic-researchers - to share practices, knowledges, and speculations at the intersection of apocalyptic thinking, artistic enquiry, and experimental pedagogy.
Leading into and during the gathering, Dreaming Alternative Ways of Education While Witnessing Apocalypses will serve as both a prompt and invitation - asking how we might learn jotherwise, in other ways, while the world continues through ongoing cycles of collapse and renewal.
Through conversation, listening, and imaginative exchange, the session foregrounds practices of embodied research, communal dreaming, and the weaving of counter-narratives.
Together, the VSSL team and Rose Choreographic School cohort will consider how education might transform under pressure: beyond institutions, beyond certainty, and within the entangled temporalities of multiple apocalypses.
This gathering is not open to the public, but its resonances will inform future ways in which both VSSL Studio and the Rose Choreographic School cohort continue to think, make, and share in uncertain times.
Together, the VSSL team and Rose Choreographic School cohort will consider how education might transform under pressure: beyond institutions, beyond certainty, and within the entangled temporalities of multiple apocalypses.
This gathering is not open to the public, but its resonances will inform future ways in which both VSSL Studio and the Rose Choreographic School cohort continue to think, make, and share in uncertain times.
Booking Information
Thursday the 25th of September at VSSL Studio
︎︎︎ This is a private event, not open to the public
"...the focus is on coming together as a community of artist researchers to discover the conditions we need for speculation and articulation" - Rose Choreographic School
Image courtesy of the Rose Choreographic School.
Image courtesy of the Rose Choreographic School.
About Rose Choreographic School
Rose Choreographic School is an experimental research and pedagogy project. We support a cohort of 13 artists to explore their singular choreographic enquiries and to collectively imagine a school through which knowledges and practices can be developed and shared. There is no set curriculum or syllabus, and no predetermined outcome; the focus is on coming together as a community of artist researchers to discover the conditions we need for speculation and articulation. Each cycle of the School lasts two years, during which we offer access to studio spaces, mentoring and a research budget. The Artistic Faculty for this first cycle are Alesandra Seutin, Trajal Harrell and William Forsythe and they will invite engagement with their own research concerns and practices. The current cohort have collectively written a statement in solidarity with Palestine. It can be read in English or Arabic on our Publications page.
www.rosechoreographicschool.com
Credits
DREAMING ALTERNATIVE WAYS OF EDUCATION WHILE WITNESSING APOCALYPSES (A GATHERING) as part of ENTANGLEMENTS OF THE APOCALYPSE is co-curated by Mine Kaplangı, Benjamin Sebastian, Joseph Morgan Schofield and Ash McNaughton. The programme is made possible with public funding from the National Lottery and Arts Council England.
Promotional image courtesy of Mijke van der Drift (photographed by Eda Sancakdar) and Zissel Aronow.
Patriarchy’s tantrum of death sees attacks on trans people, refugees, migrants, and “politics of inclusion” which is shorthand for the right to racism and misogyny.
The end might come in the guise of climate breakdown, or social uprisings, but it is coming closer, and we are part of it.
In this performance talk, combining text and visuals, Mijke van der Drift and Zissel Aronow offer transfeminist concepts and practices for helping patriarchy face its own bitter end.
The end might come in the guise of climate breakdown, or social uprisings, but it is coming closer, and we are part of it.
In this performance talk, combining text and visuals, Mijke van der Drift and Zissel Aronow offer transfeminist concepts and practices for helping patriarchy face its own bitter end.
Booking Information
Friday the 26th of September, 7-pm at VSSL Studio
︎︎︎ RSVPs essential - Book tickets HERE
The end might come in the guise of climate breakdown, or social uprisings, but it is coming closer, and we are part of it. - Mijke van der Drift
Promotional image courtesy of Zissel Aronow.
Promotional image courtesy of Mijke van der Drift photgraphed by Eda Sancakdar.About MIJKE VAN DER DRIFT
Mijke van der Drift works on transfeminist and anti-imperial ethics through philosophies of movement, collective action, and counter-cultural production. This work takes the form of writings, performances, and sound pieces, often by way of interdisciplinary collaborations.
Mijke is Tutor (Research) at the Royal College of Art, London and co-chair of its Union branch. Mijke is a founding member of the arts collective Red Forest. Together with Nat Raha, Mijke co-authored Trans Femme Futures (Pluto 2024), and co-edit the Radical Transfeminism Zine. Mijke published in Alternatives, Social Text, Journal of Speculative Philosophy, with Cambridge University Press, and many other outlets.
About ZISSEL ARONOW
Zissel Aronow is a community organiser and artist from Philadelphia. Their work focuses on bringing people together through the co-creation of spaces and objects marked by experimentation and collective action. Zissel recently curated an exhibition titled Out From the Centre at Mimosa House, highlighting the political work of queer, trans and disabled people in London over the last 40 years. They currently facilitate Queer Minds, a peer support programme for LGBTQIA+ people in South East London and recently published Until Palestine is Free: Lessons From a Student Intifada, which they co-edited with Tessnim Tolba.
Credits
TRANS GET DOWN: HOSPICING HE-MAN AT THE BITTER END - as part of ENTANGLEMENTS OF THE APOCALYPSE is co-curated by Mine Kaplangı, Benjamin Sebastian, Joseph Morgan Schofield and Ash McNaughton. The programme is made possible with public funding from the National Lottery and Arts Council England.
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