Hello. I hope you and your loved ones are keeping safe and well at this strange and unsettling time.
Thankfully, I’ve been okay so far. Here’s some info about what I’ve been up to since the beginning of March.
That feels like a long time ago, while things to come feel very uncertain. I’m concerned about many aspects of that but also hopeful that, as things change, new opportunities for better living will emerge too.
Much love,
Ben
Trying to put thoughts and feelings into sentences and paragraphs is one way I try to deal with uncertainty. Coronavirus presents an unavoidable encounter with the real. I tried to imagine how we might try to meet chaotic reality with hope.
You can read the article here.
How to Build a Hope Machine with Dr Duckie
This talk comes out of my doctoral research with Duckie, offering pragmatic pointers for anyone wanting to crack on with utopia but wondering where to start.
It’s all about homemade mutant hope machines: emergent, autonomous and adaptive DIY grassroots projects that harness the power of participatory performance, queer family and queer fun to create better worlds – one day, one show, one dance at a time.
Before the lockdown, I gave the talk at south-east London’s premiere pop-up queer venue The Chateau, as part of And What? Queer Arts Festival. It went well, and brought in £500 to help support the Chateau’s workers and artists at this difficult time – especially since they were already having to vacate the premises this month.
You can also hear me unpacking some of the ideas from the research in the opening edition of Hey Queer London’s new podcast, Tea and Cake.
And I’m working with Duckie to put some related resources online in the coming weeks, in case they might be of use as we imagine how to adapt to our uncertain new conditions.
Perhaps it’s a good time to conceive homemade mutant hope machines. Stay tuned for more details.
On queer cinema
Demii Lee Walker in Nosa Eke’s Something in the Closet, one of BFI Flare 2020’s Five Films for Freedom
Sadly, this year’s BFI Flare: London LGBTIQ+ Film Festival was cancelled because of the coronavirus outbreak. For Sight & Sound, I wrote about Five Films for Freedom – an online part of the festival’s programme that proceeded as planned – and how its concerns with queer publicness, domesticity and virality resonate with the pandemic.
You can read the article here.
Meanwhile, this week brought the wonderful news that Derek Jarman’s Prospect Cottage in Dungeness has been saved, following a successful crowdfunding appeal.
As previously mentioned, I wrote about Prospect Cottage for Sight & Sound here.
On queer performance
Bourgeois and Maurice in Insane Animals. Image by Drew Forsyth
Last month, I went to Manchester to see the premiere of alt cabaret superstars Bourgeois & Maurice’s debut musical, Insane Animals at HOME MCR. Based on the Epic of Gilgamesh (yep, really), it’s a wild and exciting upscaling of their weirdo sensibility, with a whiff of the apocalypse about it.
On queer spaces and queer fun
Urban Claims and the Right to the City, a new book from UCL Press, charts community activism in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, and London. It features the voices of a spectrum of people involved in grassroots campaigns fighting for more just and pleasurable cities.
I’m one of the 13 contributors, offering reflections on the civic value of queer spaces and the generative power of fun.
You can buy the book or download a free PDF version here.
There’s more on Dr Duckie here, my blog is at NotTelevision.net and I’m on Twitter @not_television.
And if you’d rather not get this kind of update, my apologies – just reply with ‘no thanks’ in the subject line.
Thanks for reading, and I hope you have all the care and support you need at the moment. Stay safe and well.
Much love,
Ben
