Activism Via Humus: The Composters Decode Decomponomics

Inspired by a graduate seminar on protest and performance and aimed at opposing our city's composting ordinances, we founded a multimedia performance duo, the Composters, to engage in what we call “activism via humus.” We have performed at a multitude of US venues, tailoring our script to local politics and global environmental issues. Using the satirical personas of Mary Mercury and Glenda Greenhouse and the metaphor of compost, we theorize and embody, with an ecofeminist sensibility, the realities and hypocrisies of contemporary environmental and social politics. “Decomponomics” is a show we wrote, performed, and toured in the summer of 2007. Our origin and sustainability as performance activists is as organic, complex, and process-oriented as compost itself. For compost, death and decay are the literal foundation for future growth. For us, expired policies and opinions are thrown on the compost heap and satirically turned, becoming the metaphoric foundation for activism.