DANKCollective took over PEAK gallery: a live performance during COVID where you could look but you couldn't touch. Along with the performance was a repeated showing of Consensual Cannibalism (The Sacred Nugget).

 

Consensual Cannibalism (The Sacred Nugget) is collaborative video work created by members of DANKCollective. The video features a character who has become obsessed and is eventually consumed by an object/life form he is building known as the ‘Sacred Nugget’. The creation of the object was live streamed on the IRL section of Twitch.tv and was subsequently named by the Twitch chatroom which averaged 100-300 live viewers. Acting as one collective conscious voice, the chatroom influenced the direction of the stream with their demands and comments. For example, a donation was made in exchange for a bite of the Nugget to be taken. 

 

The Nugget is constructed using delicious cheesy, corn-based snacks: off-brand wotsits. When water is added to these maize snacks the mixture is first malleable and easy to work with, if not a little sticky, but when left to dry out creates a solid and slightly spongy object. The final product was not dissimilar to the size of a large (Frankenstein) newborn, adopting this grotesque, humorous, and abject quality. We often make work with food as a representation of the abundance of media consumption. It’s as if we are being force fed information, imagery and feelings from others. We feel sick, so we regurgitate and give back to the machine, to the audience; the brutal truth that no matter how messy things get, people can’t help but watch.