Dishing the Dirt at Glastonbury
24 June 2011
Shangri-La, the festival's dystopian wonderland of after-hours music and performance, will be stricken by an outbreak of a 'virus' that can be spread via touch, contaminating all who come into contact with it.
Alleys will be covered in invisible UV paint, creating a visual means to infect thousands of people and creating two groups: the contaminated and the clean. The only way to achieve purity, cleanliness and salvation will be through the Decontamination Unit.
At the entrance, guests will be surrounded by footage of viral outbreaks before they encounter a microbial zoo: a menagerie of the flora and fauna of the human body. A team of microbiologists will assess the contaminated revellers and determine whether they require moral or physical decontamination.
The first route leads to counselling with a team of psychiatrists, led by Dr Mark Salter of Homerton Hospital in Hackney. Through led introspection and psychological priming, guests will be prepared to enter the Shame Drain, where they will be able to purge themselves of dirty secrets to a voice recorder positioned inside a black box.
Those not selected for psychiatric cleansing will be dressed in a biohazard suit and sent for physical purification. After making their way through the cleansing chambers, the purified will exit through a raised skywalk onto the pristine second level of Shangri-La, having escaped the world of filth, and embark into a brave, clean new world.
Debs Armstrong, creative director of Shangri-La, says: "This year I wanted to bring some scientific content to Shangri-La - give the narrative a bit more meat. There are so many interactive artistic installations that are very creative, but to bring actual science into the fold is altogether different, and rarely done.”
The Decontamination Unit is sponsored by the Wellcome Trust as part of the Dirt Season of events, a celebration and exploration of all things filthy from Glasgow to the West Country.
Dr Amy Sanders, Special Projects Manager at Wellcome Trust, says: “When I first started thinking about where we should take the Wellcome Trust Dirt season, Glastonbury seemed an obvious choice: organisers and visitors have to deal with copious mud and dust, limited showers and loos, and numerous humans (and their germs) in close proximity.
“It’s one of those rare occasions when most of us are confronted with our own, and others’, bodily dirt - what better place to get people thinking about our complex relationship with it?”
Decontamination Unit
The Unit will be open:
Thursday 23 June, 21.00-01.00
Friday 24 June and Saturday 25 June, 12.00-16.00 and 23.00-03.00
Sunday 26 June, 12.00-16.00 only
