Lois Weaver (r) and Ben Walters after Dr Duckie’s Homemade Mutant Hope Machines at the Live Art Development Agency, 2 July 2019. Image by JM Tyree
On Tuesday 2 July 2019, I reprised my talk, Dr Duckie’s Homemade Mutant Hope Machines – which debuted at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern in May – at the Live Art Development Agency. The legendary Lois Weaver did me the huge honour of delivering glamorous-assistant duties and hosting a Q&A.
The LADA crowd was smaller and quieter than the RVT one but I think the talk went just as well. There was lots of note-taking and some beautiful, moving and exciting responses from people who came. Someone told me how thinking about queer hope made them remember for the first time in decades the importance as a fledgling lesbian of games of British bulldog with a Christian youth group; someone else told me they were excited at how much the ideas around homemade mutant hope machines resonated with, and should help them realise, a project about DIY/queer/Dada/grunge cultures. On Facebook the next day, someone said they wanted a homemade mutant hope machine T-shirt, so I suggested they make one – agency, innit.
Meanwhile, a short blog outlining the idea of homemade mutant hope machines is now live on the website of Magic Me, an intergenerational arts charity that has collaborated with Duckie. They came to the RVT talk and asked to put something on the website. You can find it here.
