“Ages ago, about exactly one week after having Nexplanon removed from the inner side of my left arm, under the skin, I felt how my shoulders widened.
Nexplanon is a birth control implant that releases progestin.
It contains 68 mg of the active substance etonogestrel.
Synthetic progestin mimics the actions of progesterone, a naturally occurring hormone.”

– Ana Teo Ala-Ruona

toxinosexofuturecummings is a bodyfiction about pleasurable sex on a polluted planet. It’s a speech performance of a body making itself with words. In the performance sex is seen as an evolutionary and developmental process. It opens up a world in which materials and multispecies bodies infiltrate each other, giving and receiving pleasure. The world is thoroughly polluted, but possible, queer and trans: full of new pleasures and sexualities.

toxinosexofuturecummings is a performance about an anticipatory and transformational state.

Content warning: The piece deals with environmental toxins, pollution, hormones and transition. The speech also includes sexual and pornographic content.

In Human Resources the work will be performed in collaboration with LA based trans-futurist and sound synthesist Scallion Chloe.

Working group:
Ana Teo Ala-Ruona (text & speech)
Alvi Haapamäki (costume & maski)
Satu Kankkonen (sound design)
Scallion Chloe (sound design and processing)
Elina Minn (dramaturgy)

Saara Hannus (production assistance)

Photo credit: Nova Kaspia

Ana Teo Ala-Ruona is a performance and visual artist and educator based in Helsinki. They are interested in generating new forms of collectivity, interdependence and futurities in artistic practice, while creating space for silenced, unheard or non-normative, queer and trans narratives and experiences. Drawing from techniques found in the fields of feminist pedagogy, contemporary performance and theater, activism, and literature, they create collaborative strategies for feminist speculative fiction in lived practice. https://anateoalaruona.net

Organized in conjunction with Ana Teo Ala-Ruona’s solo exhibition TWAH(=These Worlds Are Here) at Gas, a mobile, autonomous, experimental and networked platform for contemporary art located in a truck gallery parked around Los Angeles and online. TWAH(=These Worlds Are Here) will be parked outside of Human Resources post-show on July 27 from 9-10pm. http://www.gas.gallery

Supported by Frame Contemporary Art Finland, the Finnish Cultural Foundation and Poets & Writers.

Sliding scale tickets available here and at the door.