Hello. I hope you and your loved ones are keeping safe and well in the continuing weirdness.
Here’s a round-up of a few things I’ve been up to that might be of interest.
Something for the weekend:
This Is Not a Dream streaming online
Back in 2011, Gavin Butt and I made a feature documentary about queer and underground artists using moving images to talk back to TV, find fellow freaks and create new worlds.
Dickie Beau made three bespoke video-interactive live turns as part of the film.
This Is Not a Dream stars Dara Birnbaum, Vaginal Davis, David Hoyle, Nao Bustamante, Cole Escola, Scottee and many more.
This weekend, it streams online for free via Copenhagen’s Warehouse 9, including versions of Dickie’s turns unavailable elsewhere.
You can watch This Is Not a Dream – from 6pm Fri Dec 3rd to 11pm Sun Dec 5th GMT – here.
Hope-machine workshops
Dr Duckie graphic by Zed @ They Them Studio
My ‘Dr Duckie‘ research explored “homemade mutant hope machines” – large and small projects that emerge from lived experience, adapt to changing conditions and routinely generate belief in the possibility of better worlds – and start to realise them, one step at a time.
Earlier in the year, I partnered with the Live Art Development Agency and Folkestone Fringe to create a series of hope-machine workshops, exploring both individual artistic practice and forms of collective support as kinds of ‘hope machine’ fit for the cursed year of 2020.
They were a highlight of my year and mutated into three specific kinds of workshop – salon, training scheme, problem-solving – that I’m continuing to develop. (Drop me a line to hear more.)
Afterwards, as part of the Festival of Looking, I spoke with Folkestone Fringe director Diane Dever about Folkestone, the workshop process, art, care and civics.
You can watch the whole conversation with Diane here.
Long-read Duckie interview on queer artistic survival
Nearly a year ago, I sat down to talk with Simon, Dicky and Emmy from queer performance collective (and hope-machine pioneers) Duckie.
We discussed austerity, love, punters, holding forms, neoliberal nose-holding, care, privilege, mistakes, mutation, middle age and cans of beans.
This long interview has been published in a resilience-themed issue of the journal Research in Drama Education, edited by Stephen Greer and Margaret Ames.
It’s called ‘Our strength comes from our connection to each other’.
You can read the whole interview here.
Serious Fun 2 zine
Angel Rose and Oozing Gloop’s Serious Fun Funzine set the bar for exploring the transgressive potential of fun, messily melding nightlife and theory.
Now there’s a follow-up, offering ‘satirical solutions for satirical times’, from dance rituals and temporary tattoos to ‘Excesstentialist’ and ‘Commucratic’ manifestos.
Serious Fun 2 also includes a section from my PhD, about the radical potential of fun being enhanced by the fact that it seems not to matter at all.
You can order Serious Fun 2 here.
More Dr Duckie stuff
The original homemade mutant hope-machine research is available for free via the Duckie website.
You can read the PhD (PDF or ebook) here.
Thanks for reading, and I hope you have the care and support you need at the moment. Stay safe and well.
Much love,
