The Needles – Elsewhere 

The precipices of one’s own wardrobe, the wild world of supply chains, the bizarre balance of power between global north and south: The performance collective The Needles enters the spheres of virtual fashion – a universe full of digital rituals and cyberpunk avatars, where cotton is a currency and indigo an elixir of life. Digital fashion is a continuation of social media filters on platforms such as Instagram or TikTok and a signifier of increasing alienation. But do technologies that merge our physical and digital realms really challenge our understanding of mutual care? The performance Elsewhere plays with our craving for instant rewards and the need for new and old rituals while at the same time exploring the history of forced labour in the neoliberal world order and its roots in colonialism.

The Needles (Nina Sandino, Daniela Hernandez Flores, Andrea Vezga Acevedo and Ragnheiður Erla Björnsdóttir) is a Vienna-based performance collective aiming to create experiences using decolonial methods, artivism, practices of care, and sensory exploration.