This blog post is based on a piece I was commissioned to write for the programme for a new theatrical production of Derek Jarman’s Jubilee adapted by Chris Goode.
Indie Rock-a-Nore
CW: Suicide
This post was originally commissioned by the CIRCY blog. Many thanks to Janet Boddy for all her support. I’m working to develop this into a broader project so thought I’d revisit it for a bit.
The Indie Rock-a Nore Festival was held on 21st October 2017 at the Hastings and St Leonards Angling Association. It was “[a] one-day indie-pop festival (midday to midnight), bringing together current indie bands and those of yesteryear. Raising money for Brighton based suicide prevention charity, GrassRoots, who provide support across East Sussex (Charity Number: 1149873)”. Alongside the bands there was a raffle, a pool tournament and a buffet. CIRCY made a small contribution to hosting costs, ensuring that all money taken on the door could go straight to the charity. Over £2500 was raised on the day.
Yeah, I don’t know where to begin so I’ll start by saying I refuse to forget you
The single is dead, so why is the charity single still going? There are so many other ways of soliciting donations to charity; by text, by paypal, by cash point. It seems anachronistic to return to the charity single model, where musicians donate their labour in exchange for a financial donation from consumers . Yet time and again it is the default response that marks the significance of an event.
Each time a new charity single comes out it makes me think about what is at stake – what problems are being responded to? what solutions are being offered? Who is helping whom and why?
Continue reading Yeah, I don’t know where to begin so I’ll start by saying I refuse to forget you
Queerama – Docfest 2017
Thoughts on Queerama as Queer History.
The history of queer representation in film is sometimes the history of not being easily seen. It can be the history of having to work really hard to find yourself represented. It can be the history of having to work really hard with what you are given, when you are represented as the freak, the pervert, the duplicitous spy, the blackmailer.
Queerama for me, was the story of how people have negotiated the identities that have been imposed on them. As a history Queerama shows us a series of outside definitions of queer identities that have had to be negotiated; homosexuality, for example, has been seen as a sin, an illness, to an act of dissidence. Sexualities and their identities have been legislated and defined from above, diagnosed by sexologists, feared for contagion, dissected like a guinea pig, but they have also been squeezed through the cracks.
Viv Albertine’s pioneering women (and what happens when we meet our idols)
*Guest post by Laura Cofield*
A moment of pure joy washed over me last Wednesday as I watched my two favourite feminist icons sit on stage together and chat about pioneering women in music as part of The Odditorium series of events for Brighton Fringe Festival. Viv Albertine, writer, artist and guitarist of The Slits was invited to talk in conversation with Lucy about the women she had come to recognise as influential in her life. It was like ‘grasping at straws’ she described, born in the fifties and with so few women visible in the public eye, let alone pioneering in alternative and subculture.
Continue reading Viv Albertine’s pioneering women (and what happens when we meet our idols)
Do I know anyone who has worked on Jersey in the 80s?….. well funnily enough…
(Thanks to Claire Langhamer who excelled herself as travel companion/carer)
I’ve just got back from the launch of Jersey Heritage’s new exhibition ‘Bergerac’s Island: Jersey in the 1980s’. I’ve been working with the team throughout the project’s development and can honestly say the whole experience has been brilliant. This exhibition is clever stuff. It speaks across generation, to the local and the global. But it is also touching, funny and engaging – that’s pretty much what I want history to be.
Continue reading Do I know anyone who has worked on Jersey in the 80s?….. well funnily enough…
#emergencydemobrighton
These are the words I gave at last night’s amazing, angry, joyful, loving, demo against Trump and his muslim ban. I know most of the thousands of people couldn’t hear what the speakers were saying. Because there were just so many of you there. Your bodies filled the space, soaked up the sound and responded with chants, shouts and woops. (Note, just because you might think you’ve got the biggest megaphone, doesn’t mean you have. Believe me I know, I’ve tried them all)
#MoreThanAssistants: Smashing Patriarchy one Doll at a Time
Over the last few months a new feminist project has been occupying a small group of feminist historians at the University of Sussex. #MorethanAssistants is inspired by the history of feminist interventions in Historical practice.
We are concerned with
- The burden of responsibility on those few female figures who manage to earn a space in the public realm.
- The disproportionate shaming of young women for unruly behaviour.
- The power of playful, messy, feminism.
- The importance of carrying our sisterhood with us, whether physically, virtually or emotionally
- The power of being in the wrong place.
You can hear more about the assistants on this PRBH radio interview from 1.07 to 1.31
Continue reading #MoreThanAssistants: Smashing Patriarchy one Doll at a Time
Your punk politics will be privileged, or it will be bullshit
An assault on an all female band by a member of security staff at this weekend’s Undercover punk festival in Brighton has brought the online mansplainers and slut shamers out of the woodwork. It also raised some issues that need to be resolved, some feel new, some are as old as punk itself. Can women make a new space in a scene and politicize it from within ? Is there ever a way to reconcile the punk politics of the past, and the intersectional politics of the present? Can we actively build a politics where race, gender, age and subcultural identity intersect ?– the answer, it seems to me, to all of these questions is the same; not really, no. Continue reading Your punk politics will be privileged, or it will be bullshit
KISMIF: Process not subject – it’s the way that we rhyme
I’ve just got back from the most mind-blowing conference I’ve ever been to. Keep It Simple, Make It Fast, is a conference/music and literary festival/art show organised around DIY cultures, Spaces, Places. Events were held across various venues in Porto, bringing together academic presentations, some celebrity guests, live performances, exhibitions with daily book launches and a summer school. The event is convened by Paula Guerra and Andy Bennett with an incredible team of international volunteers. I went with my Subcultures Network army (Matt Worley, Petes Webb and Ward, David Wilkinson and stayed in a seminary with the Punk Scholars Network and Steve Ignorant from Crass).
Continue reading KISMIF: Process not subject – it’s the way that we rhyme