Piss discuss confrontational performances about sexual violence
Vancouver noise-punk band Piss has built a cult following through performances centered on singer Taylor Zantingh’s experiences with sexual violence. At a festival in Eindhoven, the group delivered a fixed set combining abrasive music, spoken audio and physical performance, after issuing a trigger warning to the audience.
Vancouver quartet Piss has earned a cult following for uncompromising live performances that address singer Taylor Zantingh’s experiences with sexual violence.
The band’s music combines hardcore, poetry, sound collage and performance art. Its set at Eindhoven’s Hit the City festival in late August included a trigger warning, noise-punk passages, audio samples of children laughing and excerpts of feminist writer Andrea Dworkin discussing pornography.
Zantingh moved across the stage while drummer Garreth Roberts, bassist Gavin Moya and guitarist Tyler Paterson played. The band has performed the same set every night for the past two years, according to the supplied source.
THE QUESTIONS THIS EVENT LEAVES BEHIND
What conditions determine whether a trigger warning meaningfully prepares an audience for material about sexual violence?
How might repeating the same performance nightly affect the people required to relive its subject matter?
What responsibilities do venues have when programming a performance built around traumatic personal experience?
Who gains control over the interpretation of lived experience when it is presented through noise, samples and stage movement?
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GLOBAL CURIOSITY MAP · AUGUST 2026