Third Space Network

Apocalypse Fatigue was the second broadcast of Bunker Fridays, bringing together host Randall Packer and pioneering choreographer and intermedia artist Maida Withers in a deep, poetic, and visceral exploration of artistic resistance, cultural memory, and political crisis.

 

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The episode opens with Randall’s introduction to the evening’s themes, followed by a collaborative performance created in the Telematic Theater: a haunting descent into images of global collapse and psychic disarray.

 

Maida is embedded into shifting apocalyptic scenes—raging fires, a high-security prison in El Salvador, a raving speech by Elon Musk, and a grotesque Oval Office tableau in which Trump and J.D. Vance berate President Zelensky about the war in Ukraine. In the wake of these confrontations, Maida finds herself adrift in the spherical 3D space of the Telematic Theater, her body floating through a void as she enacts a journey of collapse and ascent—an embodied metaphor for the torment of alienation and the emotional exhaustion that defines our age: apocalypse fatigue.

 

Following the performance, Maida and Randall engage in a sweeping dialogue that traverses decades of artistic experimentation and the urgent present. Maida reflects on her entry into dance and performance art, her resistance to patriarchal structures, and the interweaving of poetry, movement, and media in her radical practice. She shares memories of confronting censorship, crossing boundaries, and nurturing a vision of uncompromised artistic freedom.

 

The two artists pay homage to Alice Denney, the visionary founder of DC’s avant-garde arts community, whose presence looms large as a symbol of courage and possibility. Alice becomes a touchstone in the conversation—a reminder of what is possible when bold, visionary women lead the charge.

 

Maida’s storytelling conjures vivid memories of roller rinks transformed into performance arenas, of dancers in chicken coops, of headgear transmitting bodily energy into digital environments. These stories reflect with humor and revelation, culminating in thoughts on aging, embodiment, and the spiritual revelations of a life in art.

 

Together, Maida and Randall articulate a vision of the artist as a vessel for cultural transformation and imaginative rebellion. Bunker Fridays becomes a sanctuary for this vision—a theatrical, communal space where political urgency meets poetic experimentation, and where the fatigue of apocalypse can give way to creative awakening.

 

 

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The next Bunker Fridays, Defending Culture, stands as a living archive of resistance, resilience and reinvention in the face of a world teetering on the edge.