GLIMPSES OF POO-TOPIA

The Central West Village Voice has published a review of Cementa, entitled “Cementa 2026: Kandos Becomes the Canvas” – which includes a brief mention of Pootopia.

At the centre was Pootopia, an exhibition that managed to be funny, confronting and thought-provoking all at once. The wonderfully named “Turdis” composting toilet invited visitors to learn about the potential value of human manure when properly treated – using humour to start conversations about waste, resources and sustainability.

In the heat of the Cementa Festival, Kim and Lucas took time out from interacting with punters and poo-ers at The Turdis, to have a chat with Damien de Montemas from 2BS FM, a radio station in Bathurst.

Damien is fully signed up to the cult of Pootopia! We expect corporate investment to start rolling in shortly.

You can listen here:

In the lead up to Cementa 26, Kim and Lucas were interviewed by the very entertaining and erudite Fairlie Hamilton, of ABC Illawarra.

You can listen to the interview here:

Laura Luciana has written a thoughtful review of Cementa 26 over at Memo Review, which also includes discussion of Pootopia.

Here’s the paragraph about Pootopia and The Turdis:

A different provocation was offered by Kim Williams and Lucas Ihlein, who are frequent collaborators of the Kandos School for Cultural Adaptation (run by local creative director of Cementa, Alex Wisser, who co-founded the festival with Georgina Pollard and Ann Finegan) and who appeared at Cementa24. Their current research project, Pootopia, has a travelling “TURDIS”—a hot pink composting toilet cubicle that has been on tour for two years and counting. It sat prominently in Kandos in front of the Community Centre. A whole world was created around Pootopia, with an anthemic song (“Poo and Wee,” which we sung as a choir at Cementa HQ), zines, and many opportunities to participate: by painting your poo, engaging in the guided somatic movements and chants to encourage “conscious shitting,”* or by actually making an “offering” in the toilet, for which you would receive one “shitcoin.” Pootopia asked you to join in imagining that humanure could be a world-shifting sustainable practice. Now, compare this participatory public excrement installation to Florentina Holzinger’s Seaworld Venice at the Austrian Pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale where naked performers have been bathing in the urine of Biennale-goers for months. Holzinger’s concurrent public toilet presents a masochistic version of this septic story. Its hydrofeminist imperative is explored with a level of extremity that is particular to an eroticised posthuman aesthetic of climate art that positions itself in crisis. I wonder why it is that at Cementa26 the ecological art instead looked optimistically zany?

… I would very much like to hear Laura finish this train of thought – what is her answer to this question?

—

*Credit: the Conscious Shitting workshop at The Turdis was led by Gideon Payten Griffiths, who was a guest artist of the Pootopia project.

“Kandos is ready to get weird and whacky again this weekend, with the return of Cementa…” – classic commercial TV news intro!

…anyway, here’s a little video which shows The Turdis’ first appearance on the idiot box, as part of a little spot about Cementa Festival. Thanks Channel 7!

There was a shitload of media coverage of The Turdis at Cementa 2026!

First cab off the rank is an article by Ben Langford, published on 11 Sept (before the festival), in the Illawarra Mercury.

Here’s the article as a PDF.

Here’s a link to the original article (paywall).

And here is the article as text:
Continue reading “Wollongong artists create hot pink crapper where users are rewarded in ‘s—coin’”