Cyborg Orgy

Maggio 12, 2026

When weapons pierce through the concrete of buildings, the stems of plants, and the flesh of animals and humans alike; when the metals and sulphur from rockets flying overhead and exploding nearby seep into the soil, bones, water and blood, are we capable of noticing those others—the non-humans—who are being destroyed just as we are? The immeasurable—in the literal sense—losses of nameless creatures, organisms and ecosystems continue daily and go unpunished. And, to be honest, we don’t know what to do about it. So we do what we can — we take to the stage with a theatrical show to name the crimes, mourn their victims and bear witness to the disaster that is spreading and demands our response.

The massive and long-term damage that Russia is inflicting on Ukraine’s environment through its military actions, such as the blowing up of the dam at the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Station in 2023, is an act of ecocide that demands to be made known. By performing stories of war that include non-human agents, we expand our understanding of post-war justice, its temporality, and its potential to include more-than-human worlds. We cannot achieve full justice or restore what has been destroyed, but we are capable of building networks of support and rebuilding relationships with our environments.

In her famous ‘Cyborg Manifesto’, feminist scholar and cultural critic Donna Haraway calls modern warfare an ‘orgy of cyborgs’. Feminist researcher and cultural critic Donna Haraway describes modern warfare as an ‘orgy of cyborgs’. In the context of war, we witness how rapidly the environment is becoming a hybrid of machines and living organisms. Within our own biotope, we already coexist closely with military technologies: weapons, software, and code. A shared threat brings us closer to animals and lays bare our interdependence. The image of the cyborg, which we borrow from Haraway, is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid living in a dual natural-man-made world; it is the product of social reality and, at the same time, the product of fiction. It reflects our social and bodily reality and serves as a resource of the imagination, rich in fruitful connections that we need more than ever for our collective survival.

We would like to thank those who assisted us with our research whilst preparing the performance: researcher Daria Tsymbaliuk for the materials provided and our conversation; Oleksandr Kovalevskyi, head of the 6th State Fire and Rescue Unit of the State Emergency Service in Izium, for the meeting and consultation; local historian Oleksandr Myasishchev for a walk together through Izium; ecologist, Doctor of Biological Sciences, and co-founder of the Ukrainian Nature Conservation Group Ivan Moiseenko for the conversation, materials and data.

The project is being implemented in collaboration with the cultural initiative uniT as part of the Future Narrative for Planet Earth programme.