DANKLANDS [SWAMPED]

"Augusten messages, ‘Since I last spoke to u i hav had over 100 emotional breakthrus.’"

— Danklands, Holly Childs, 2014

“there’s a precision zoned-outness in the finely, almost molecularly, constructed sentences that flow out into the vast intertidal marshes of language with which the internet is silted together. At other moments, the text floats in dense poetic dazes, tightly worded and loose”.

— Matthew Fuller, Professor of Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London, Holly Childs’ Danklands reviewed, aqnb, 2015

“Danklands is not like any novel anyone ever read or wrote before. Holly Childs has forged a perfect fractured language for this slippery world of screens and feels, emoji and mouths, blood and swamp that we share.”

—Hannah Black, Danklands cover blurb, 2014

Danklands [Swamped] is a performance version of Danklands, a novel set in Melbourne Docklands written by Holly Childs. First performed for Arcadia Missa, London in 2014, and then again at the NGV for Liquid Architecture in 2015, Danklands [Swamped] iterates the zoned-out distributed subjectivities innate in both the novel Danklands, and the structure of web 2.0 on which Danklands is modelled.

Danklands [Swamped] is being rematerialised ten years later for Of Stadiums and Construction Sites (Ne change rien pour que tout soit différent), a project by Lisa Radford.

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Holly Childs is a writer and artist based in Naarm Melbourne. Their work, across fiction, poetry, visual art, and performance focuses on the shifting mechanisms of storytelling in a contemporary world in which physical matter is constantly being reshaped, recontextualised, and rewritten by emerging crises, trends, and technologies. 

They have made solo and co-authored performances for institutions including Palais de Tokyo (Paris, FR), Rupert (Vilnius, LT), 3HD/Creamcake (Berlin, DE), Atonal (Berlin, DE), Trust (Berlin, DE), Hellerau (Dresden, DE), Museum Kurhaus (Kleve, DE), Rewire (den Haag, NL), Botanische Tuin Zuidas (Amsterdam, NL), Rile (Brussels, BE), PAF (Olomouc, CZ), Arcadia Missa (London, GB), Fuzzy Vibes (Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland), Metro Arts (Meanjin Brisbane), Minerva (Eora Sydney), Firstdraft (Eora Sydney), Soft Centre (Tharawal Casula), Liquid Architecture (Naarm) and Arts House (Naarm).