A titanic golden turtle shell, stuffed to bursting with dark, glittering trash. A sea of featureless faces, sculpted from shards of plastic, waterlogged cigarettes, and river refuse. The cacophony of colliding bottle caps draped over a shimmying performer’s shoulders, empty water bottles scraping on the ground, and a rhythmic, underwater backing track. These sights and sounds from an otherworldly runway show are part of the third and final act in a months-long art exhibition: Ouroboros, the latest project from interdisciplinary artist Machine Dazzle.

Dazzle is a self-described “emotionally driven instinct-based conceptual artist” who’s making a big splash in the art world. He’s best known for his costume design work with performer and playwright Taylor Mac, with whom he worked on the epic A 24-Decade History of Popular Music in 2016. Since then, he’s had a number of other projects, including his first solo exhibition, Queer Maximalism x Machine Dazzle, at New York’s Museum of Art and Design.

This year, Dazzle was the Roman J. Witt Artist In Residence at the University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA) in Ann Arbor. Ouroboros is the product of that residency: a three-phase exhibition reflecting humanity’s relationship to waste and queerness. Working almost entirely with garbage, much of which was salvaged from the Huron River, Dazzle created a serpentine sculpture that fills an entire room at the museum.

Another hard-to-miss aspect of Ouroboros: the countless 3D-printed penises and vaginas scattered throughout the sculpture. These genitals, Dazzle says, speak both to the way garbage seems to endlessly reproduce itself, and to the undeniable human involvement in producing such an insurmountable amount of waste: “It is human garbage, so I’ve given it human genitals,” he tells INTO.

Phase II of “Ouroboros.” Photo by Neil Kagerer, courtesy of the U-M Museum of Art.

But Ouroboros is much more than an elaborate recycling project. Dazzle’s choice of materials stemmed not only from his environmental concern, but from seeing himself in the trash.

“As a queer person, I’ve always felt separate,” Dazzle says. “I’m 51 years old, and growing up, queerness just was not in the media. It wasn’t in television, or films. And if it was, it was a very stereotyped character. You didn’t get all the layers — you didn’t get the whole rainbow, let’s say, of gay possibility and characters growing up when I did.”

He remembers feeling queer as a child even before he knew he was gay, or what being gay meant. Other children, he says, felt it too, and didn’t take it kindly, calling him names and isolating him at school.

“They knew I was different. I knew I was different,” Dazzle says. “There’s nothing I could do about it, and I really felt just discarded. I felt thrown out, not welcome, unwanted.”

It kind of reminds me of myself. I find the beauty and the value in something that was discarded.

Machine Dazzle

It was in that isolation that Dazzle discovered “the magic in queer joy,” he says, including his love for found objects and his knack for bringing out their beauty. 

“I have this language now — I didn’t have it back then. But I loved making things and being creative,” he says. “I found joy in garbage and found objects. I was always picking things up and my mother was like, ‘Don’t touch that!’”

But Dazzle touched and touched and touched, leading all the way to Ouroboros, his greatest conversation with garbage yet.

“It kind of reminds me of myself,” Dazzle says. “I find the beauty and the value in something that was discarded.”

Machine Dazzle. Photo by Amy Touchette, courtesy of the U-M Museum of Art.

In Ouroboros’ first two phases, those discarded objects lived as a static sculpture in the museum. But for the third phase in June, the sculpture came to life and hit the runway, as 13 models wore elaborate masks and costumes crafted from garbage by Dazzle.

The runway show’s models were sourced from the local community, including current and former students from the University of Michigan. Dazzle had very limited time with the cast: just a meeting on Tuesday, a day of fittings on Thursday, and the show itself on Friday. 

It is human garbage, so I’ve given it human genitals

Machine Dazzle

“I was nervous that maybe they wouldn’t respond to me, because I’m very old school,” Dazzle says. “Sometimes I wonder how much I really have in common with a queer person who’s in their 20s, because I’m twice as old as them.”

But to hear his models tell it, being part of Ouroboros couldn’t have been a greater experience. Charlie Reynolds, a grad student at the university and the only model handpicked by Dazzle, says the show was the perfect way to dip his toes into the world of performance art. Reynolds’ costume incorporated his wheelchair to bring a new element to the show’s genital-infused aesthetic: a pair of pendulous balls of trash, which swung to and fro as Reynolds made his way through the audience.

“I love my balls,” Reynolds admits through a chuckle. “They’re just swinging like cannonballs ready to take someone out. But I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Charlie Reynolds in “Ouroboros.” Photo by Woobenz Deriveau, courtesy of the U-M Museum of Art.

Fellow model Rowan Janusiak, a recent grad of the university’s dance program and a local drag performer, is no stranger to performance, but they welcomed the challenge of expressing themself through the limitations of wearable sculpture.

“My headpiece is covered in penises, which I think kind of speaks for itself,” they say. Their costume, an all-white ensemble with a rattling boa of plastic bottle caps, also featured a crushed cup from Wisconsin-based fast food chain Culver’s front and center. Being from Wisconsin themself, Janusiak says the detail “feels like a fun homage.”

Rowan Janusiak in “Ouroboros.” Photo by Woobenz Deriveau, courtesy of the U-M Museum of Art.

And Emerson Granillo, another alumnus of the university’s graduate school, appreciated that the runway show was a far cry from fashion week, with the models embodying bizarre characters and modes of movement rather than blankly displaying Dazzle’s creations. Granillo’s look, a black bodysuit with a cloak reminiscent of six-pack rings, also included two phallic shakers, which he says he relished waving at the audience: “It was really nice to be able to be lower to the ground, being this mysterious creature with these dicks in your face.”

Emerson Granillo in “Ouroboros.” Photo by Woobenz Deriveau, courtesy of the U-M Museum of Art.

Dazzle called working with the performers “magical,” praising the parts of their own skill sets and identities they lent to the runway show.

“When you collaborate, it’s less about compromise, and it’s more about just accepting that other people see things in a different way, and we learn from each other,” he says. “I mean, I learned from my own show, because other people are involved and were allowed to do their own thing.”

Dazzle stresses that, alongside the show’s movement director Clare Croft, he didn’t give the models specific instructions of how to perform. Instead, he encouraged them to “become other,” letting their characters and movement match their out-of-this-world outfits and defy definition.

“I think that’s part of queerness, too,” Dazzle reflects, musing on what it means to be queer in practice. “I think queerness just can’t really be defined. You know it when you experience it — or when you smell it. You know what I mean? That’s queer: it’s like, ‘That totally doesn’t go together.’”

“I call it the ewww factor,” he adds. “If it isn’t ewww, it’s not allowed in my show!”

More performers in “Ouroboros.” Photos by Woobenz Deriveau, courtesy of the U-M Meseum of Art.

Beyond the opportunity to embrace their ewww-iest selves, the models said they especially appreciated the queer community Dazzle fostered by bringing them together. Reynolds says during the short process, the cast found time to forge friendships, feverishly taking down each other’s contact info to keep their connections alive when the show was over.

“I think in the queer community, it can be really hard to find each other sometimes. So when you have an artist that is bringing those people together, it’s really meaningful,” he explained. “It’s not just a runway show; it’s something that brings all of us together and gets us all in a room, where the age range can be from 19 to 50-something. That’s really unique. There’s nowhere else I can think of that does that.”

Janusiak also thanked Machine for introducing “​​a lot of different folks that would never really be in a room together otherwise, who probably should be in rooms together, but it just has never happened.”

“There’s people coming from Detroit, people in Ann Arbor,” they say. “It’s just been cool to get all of these different artists in a room at different points in their lives and their careers.”

If it isn’t ewww, it’s not allowed in my show!

– Machine Dazzle

Granillo added that they’d love to follow in Dazzle’s example as they move forward in their career. “Within my own work as a queer artist, I think it’s showing me that I can also create queer spaces and take up space, and what potentially that could look like,” he says.

The queer community Ouroboros facilitated was no accident: Dazzle says he sees creating queer space as both an honor and a responsibility, and bringing together the queer cast of Ouroboros was the perfect culmination for the project.

“It dawned on me at some point several years ago that I am on this earth to create queer space, because they don’t just give it to you. You have to take it for yourself and make it and build it,” Dazzle says. “If you build it, they will come.”

Phase III of “Ouroboros.” Photo by Neil Kagerer, courtesy of the U-M Museum of Art.

Post-runway show, Dazzle incorporated the 13 costumes into the original statue, leaving them on display at UMMA through August 25.  In the fall, he’ll be part of a two-person exhibition alongside Gracelee Lawrence at Wasserman Projects, an art organization in Detroit, which will open to the public on September 21. As he continues his foray into the word of fine art, Dazzle says he’s happy to go with the flow.

“I make art, but I’m not really in the art world. I work in theater, but I’m not really in the theater world either. I don’t know where I am,” he says. “I’m like a piece of styrofoam floating on the river, just wondering what little nook I’m gonna end up in.”♦

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