Spilling Toxic Tea was produced for the two-day queer eco-performance festival, Something Fierce in November 2025.
Using an invisible ink based on water from Newtown Creek (one of the most polluted waterways in the United States) visitors to the festival were invited to share their dirty little eco-secrets anonymously on November 22, 2025.
On November 23rd, these anonymous confessions were revealed, a few every hour, using a solution based on tumeric, which turned people’s handwriting scarlet—the color of shame.
Once the tea was fully spilled, it was ritually enveloped in a queer, witchy spell intended not so much to absolve folks of their eco-guilt, as to bless us all with improved eco-karma in the future.
The Something Fierce Festival occurred at Flux IV in Hunter's Point, Queens NY, at the mouth of Newtown Creek (a superfund site). It was also part of Fall of Freedom a nationwide wave of creative resistance.
Photo credit: Pasha Cas, Heather Kapplow