Do You Remember the Good Old Days Before the Ghost Town?

Durational performance, Whitechapel Gallery, London Open Live, 2025

Presented as part of the Whitechapel Gallery’s London Open Live programme, this durational performance unfolds over several hours and reflects on the lived conditions of the Capitalocene and the everyday labour of repair, persistence and care.

In dialogue with Lauren Berlant’s concept of the “situation tragedy” – a condition of ongoing precarity in which systems appear permanently on the brink of collapse – the work considers materials and social worlds that, once transformed by human use, cannot return to their original form. Change becomes irreversible, and the work of living continues in the ruins of austerity.

Image and trailer credit: Season Butler, Do You Remember the Good Old Days Before the Ghost Town? (2025), performed at Whitechapel Gallery as part of The London Open Live. Film: Baiba Sprance and Marco Berardi.