The Goldfish Bleeding in a Sea of Sharks – Wrestling Club

In 2022 and 2023, artist Thais Di Marco and WORM explore The Goldfish Bleeding in a Sea of Sharks – Wrestling Club. A series of artistic actions that reflect and react to the current impacts of Neoliberalism and Neo Liberal ideology in the art market, changing and conditioning the social role of art marking. The project is composed of a performance piece, a series of panels, NTFs and web art investigation, a research trip, a radio show, a short movie and counts with an extensive team of artists engaged in thinking about potential political intersections to either reform or destroy the neoliberal art market as a major totem of white supremacy, heteropartriacalism and colonial domination. 

The motto of the piece is the Lucha Libre, a Latin American form of wrestling where social characters can fight. The cups are not necessarily violent themselves, but the entertainment of the show relies on the multi layers of the event and, above all, on the support the fighters can get from the audience. In our show, the artists will fight against each other, for the price of having the most successful business model in the world, repeating neoliberal lies such as meritocracy, talent and selection processes.

For the panels, we will have under the coordination and mediation of Chirriro Geuzebroek 3 moments of collective reflection: the first one about neoliberalism and how artists and cultural workers can learn how to recognize its operations in their daily practice. The second one focused on cultural workers that are already integrated into the working field and are being tokenised, isolated or retaliated by having worked with activities of decolonization, intersectionality, queer politics and immigration and the thirds one about how to fight against fake news and have dialogues with political rivals in the post-truth era. 

The online aspect of the project is an investigation and experimentation with the impacts of social media on the communication and marketing of artworks. How do social media platforms capitalize and commodify artists until the point they become unpaid workers struggling for their survival, producing artistic content for an endless advertisement on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and others? Adding to this investigation is the world of financial crypto capitalism of the NFT market. 

The last one is a research trip to La Paz, Bolivia to experience and study the only exclusively traditional feminine Lucha Libre Modality thinking it through the lens of Latin American anarcho-feminism and being hosted by social movements and cultural centres that see art-making as an effective tool for social transformation and confrontation of gore capitalism. 

This project is a co-production between WORM and the director Thais Di Marco and it is sponsored by AFK, FONDS21, Het Makers Kapitaal and has partnerships with FLAM Festival, Het Huis Utrecht, Welcome to the Village and others.

CREDITS:
Director: Thais Di Marco
Dramaturg: Felizitas Stilleke
Artists: Clara Saito, Avantika Tibrewal (Tikka), Qiaochu Guo
Costume Design: Draga Dina
Scenery: Roxy Capriles
Panel Organizer: Chihiro Geuzebroek
DJs: Parisa Madani and Anna Luna
NFTs: Tommaso Buldini
Professors/ trainers: Diego Oliveira, David Klaber, Roxanne Foxy, James Rae Parnell.
Production: Charlien Adriaenssens
Many thanks to: Janpier Brands, Evelien van de Sanden, Milone Reigman, Mark Timmer, Raoni Joyan Saleh, Marina Orlova, Elise de Leede, Seven and father Odú Obará.
Project supported by AFK, FONDS21, Het Makers Kapitaal and has partnership with FLAM Festival, Het Huis Utrecht, Welcome to the Village and others.