Ecdysis with Iceboy Violet

AUDRA Festival, Kaunas, Lithuania (2023)

Art Direction and Set Design: Ella Skinner

Musical Composition and Performance: Iceboy Violet

Ice sculptors: Ledo Meistrai

Curator: Tautvydas Urbelis

Lighting Design and Installation: Adomas Kaikaris

Special thanks to AUDRA Festival and SODAS 2123

Photography: Grazvydas Jovaisa & Matas Gineika

"Instead of my world, there would soon be only ice, snow, stillness, death; no more violence, no war, no victims; nothing but frozen silence, absence of life"

Anna Kavan (Ice, 1967)

Ecdysis is an audio-visual collaboration between rapper and performer Iceboy Violet and artist and set designer Ella Skinner. Performed within an ice sculpture that transforms under heat, light, body, and movement — and designed to withstand the force of an icepick — the piece explores the tension between fragility and endurance.

The ice barrier separating performer and audience melts and morphs into a world of dis//embodiment, ir//reality, in//ex//ternality, and in//authenticity — a liminal space between fantasy and reality where the inner becomes the outer and the exoskeleton is obliterated.

Iceboy Violet’s vocal improvisations, freestyled rap, and the incidental sounds of the structure and audience merge with Skinner’s visceral, provocative, and pseudo-spiritual scenography to create a sonic and visual world of icy awe and terror.