Nutrient Cycle
Jonty Coulson
20th June - Saturday
12-2pm
Location: Bus Interchange
Nutrient cycling is the biological process through which organic and inorganic matter is transformed, exchanged, and renewed, sustaining life within an ecosystem. In NUTRIENT CYCLE, Jonty Coulson performs this process at a human scale.
In this performance, Coulson pedals a bicycle wheel connected to a blender, powering it entirely with his own energy. A feeding tube runs from the blender to his mouth, creating a closed loop in which he consumes the matter his body has helped destroy and transform.
free, experimental, endurance, ecological experiment, participatory
An array of ingredients sits beside the blender, ranging from familiar smoothie staples—bananas, oats, and milk—to disruptive additions such as hot sauce, fish, and toothpaste. Audience members are invited to add ingredients as they see fit, directly influencing the cycle unfolding before them.
As one life consumes another, matter transforms from plant to animal to soil. This continual process underpins all ecosystems. Yet human activity increasingly disrupts these cycles through waste, pollution, and environmental change. Here, the audience encounters an ecosystem embodied in a single human form and is given the opportunity to intervene. How much disruption can a cycle absorb before it collapses? Where is the threshold between adaptation and breakdown?
Part endurance test, part ecological experiment, NUTRIENT CYCLE transforms the invisible processes that sustain life into a visceral, participatory act.
About
Jonty Coulson is a 25-year-old artist and theatre maker with a Master’s degree in Biology. His performance practice is deeply informed by a background in climate and social justice activism, including involvement in protests, blockades, occupations, and sit-ins where activists have placed their bodies and autonomy at risk in resistance to oppressive systems of power.
This experience shapes Jonty’s interest in how audiences interpret and respond to acts of risk and vulnerability in performance. Their work centres on the relationship between performer and spectator, with a particular focus on the shifting power dynamics between the two. In the recent production FAUST ON TRIAL, audiences were given the authority to punish performers, continuing an ongoing exploration into spectatorship, responsibility, and the ethics of participation.