Artist Wades Into Polluted Waters to Expose Sewage Crisis

Performance artist Zack Mennell waded into the contaminated Thames river on the Deptford foreshore wearing a striking garment constructed using 24 adult nappies, creating a powerful commentary about wastewater contamination and societal attitudes toward those considered “drains on society.” The finale of Mennell’s project called (para)site saw them plunge beneath the murky water as onlookers watched, their nappy-constructed suit filling with contaminated water and waste. The provocative performance was designed to challenge perceptions of pollution and parasitism, but escalated dramatically when Mennell contracted Weil’s disease from rodent contamination in the waterway. The work exemplifies Mennell’s boundary-pushing approach to live art, where lived experience and political commentary collide across their body and performances.

The Performance That Made Environmental Contamination A Personal Matter

mennell’s method of live art deliberately blurs the boundaries between the personal and the political, employing their own physical form as a canvas for social commentary. The parasite project emerged from a conscious decision to manifest the exact terminology used to stigmatize marginalized communities—particularly welfare recipients who are routinely described as “parasites” draining society’s resources. By literally becoming the organism in contaminated environments, mennell converted abstract political rhetoric into a tangible, uncomfortable experience that audiences couldn’t overlook. This approach of self-immersion compels spectators to face their own involvement in systems that poison both waterways and vulnerable populations.

Growing up near the chalk pits of Thurrock, Essex, mennell developed a profound and almost sacred connection to the Thames and its surrounding landscape. The river has acted as both sanctuary and inspiration throughout their life—a place they traversed in recovery and a constant draw in their darkest moments. This intimate relationship with the water informs their artistic practice, producing work that feels less like performance and more like dialogue. “I feel like I’m working with it,” mennell explains, “sometimes arguing with it too.” This conversational approach converts the Thames from a setting into a collaborator, a vital presence with its distinct voice and role in the creative process.

• Costume constructed using 24 adult nappies containing contaminated water
• Developed Weil’s disease from rat urine during Thames performance
• Explores connections between pollution, shame, and societal labels
• Uses performance art to create moments of audience engagement and shared experience

From Embarrassment to Endurance Through Live Art

Translating Official Records To Results

mennell’s creative work extends beyond the visceral and into the conceptual, where administrative structures and official discourse become subject matter for performance. The artist recognizes how documents meant to categorize and control bodies—welfare applications, health documentation, formal letters—carry their own harm. By incorporating these materials into live art, mennell removes their authority and renders them absurd, revealing the machinery designed to shame and regulate. This deconstruction transforms shame from an internalized burden into a shared, visible critique of the structures generating it.

The blending of bureaucratic discourse into creative work creates a compelling exchange between the intimate and the administrative. mennell’s work challenges the predetermined narratives that systems place on vulnerable populations. Instead, they regain power by creating their own presence on their own terms. This approach acknowledges that survival itself functions as defiance when structures aim to exclude and diminish. Through live art, mennell reshapes the degradation inherent in official procedures into spaces of meaningful human contact and communal presence.

What comes forth from mennell’s practice is a vision of live art as a means for collective survival and mutual support. By revealing the contamination—both physical and symbolic that permeates and encircles marginalized communities, the artist creates space for audiences to acknowledge their own entanglement in these systems. The work is not instructional and not hopeless; instead, it affirms the possibility of change via direct engagement. mennell’s commitment to embodied performance indicates that recovery and opposition are not individual pursuits but shared actions that require observers, openness, and the readiness to get dirty in the pursuit of justice.

Creating LGBTQ+ Community Via Artistic Engagement

For mennell, live art functions not as a individual endeavor but as a tool for fostering authentic relationships within queer and marginalized communities. The artist’s work at Rat Park and beyond intentionally establishes spaces where vulnerability transforms into connection rather than isolating. By inviting audiences to participate—whether through spitting into their hand or witnessing their body submerged in polluted water—mennell reframes the act of observation into an gesture of care. This framework acknowledges that queer survival has consistently relied on collective resilience and mutual recognition. The works become collective rituals of acknowledgment, where discomfort is released and turned into collective support.

mennell’s forthcoming curation of Common Host at Peckham’s Safehouses develops this philosophy of community-building into a weekend-long exploration of folklore, ecology, and decay. By opening institutional doors to performances, screenings, and participatory workshops, the artist creates fluid divisions between art and daily experience. This commitment to accessibility reflects a profound recognition that live art doesn’t have to be rarefied or exclusive. Instead, mennell’s practice insists that the most challenging, confrontational work can also be the most generous—offering audiences the chance to recognize themselves in the muck, the pollution, and the refusal to look away from what society would prefer to ignore.

The Thames as Source of Inspiration and Reflection

For mennell, the Thames is far more than a backdrop for performance art—it is a vital collaborator, a body of water that has seen their personal struggles and artistic evolution. Growing up near Thurrock’s chalk pits in Essex, mennell developed an deep connection with the river that would later ground their most challenging pieces. The Thames drew them in during their most difficult times, a steady companion during their path to sobriety. This strong tie transforms the river from a simple place into a character within their artistic practice, a observer of both vulnerability and resistance.

“It seems I’m collaborating with it,” mennell reflects, “occasionally disagreeing with it too.” This portrayal captures the dynamic tension that defines their relationship with the water—neither entirely cooperative nor antagonistic, but rather a nuanced exchange between artist and environment. The Thames serves as a mirror reflecting social abandonment, environmental damage, and the exclusion of those labeled “parasitic” by society. By wading into its toxic depths, mennell goes beyond critiquing the sewage crisis; they enact it, letting their body to become a text through which unseen pollution turns apparent and impossible to ignore.

Post-Industrial Settings and Personal Healing

Mennell’s strong fascination with postindustrial pollution originates in their native region’s paradoxes—a landscape both bearing by Neanderthal archaeological remains and expansive Amazon distribution centers. This interplay of prehistoric epochs and modern consumer capitalism informs their artistic vision, revealing how ecological decay and environmental injustice are inseparable from systems of exploitation. Their work resists simple division between personal healing and political critique, indicating instead that survival in contaminated landscapes necessitates personal attention and communal opposition against the forces that poison our shared waters.

Shared Host and the Future of Joint Performance

In March, mennell is extending their engagement approach by opening the doors of Peckham’s ramshackle Safehouses to Common Host, a multi-day weekend event that seeks to break down the distinctions between performance, education, and community engagement. This bold initiative assembles performances, screenings, and workshops that engage with traditional stories and natural decline. Positioning live art as a means of collective reckoning with planetary challenges, Rather than offering polished spectacles, Common Host draws people into the fluid, unpredictable process of creative development—a space where vulnerability serves as a common vocabulary and green consciousness develops via lived engagement rather than conventional pedagogy.

mennell’s approach for Common Host demonstrates their broader conception of live art as fundamentally based on connection rather than transactional. The event isn’t designed to unsettle viewers for shock value alone; instead, it pursues what mennell describes as “a instance of communion” amid confrontation. By grounding the weekend in ancient folklore alongside contemporary environmental decline, mennell indicates that our current environmental crisis isn’t new but rather a continuation of humanity’s long history of extracting from and poisoning the natural world. This temporal expansion invites participants to imagine different futures where art, community, and ecological healing become inseparable practices.

• Weekend of events, presentations, and sessions exploring traditional narratives and environmental degradation
• Live art as relational practice creating instances of exchange during confrontation
• Ancient wisdom and current ecological emergency framed as perpetual tension