I want it for us, and I also want this from us
Comissioned by Birds of Paradise Theatre Company, as part of ‘Locked World’
https://www.boptheatre.co.uk/locked-world/
Video (18 mins) with integrated BSL, audio descriptions and captions.
Dancers: Clare Adam & Lesley Howard
watch full film here
I want it for us, and I also want this from us Is a video work exploring concepts of access intimacy, building empathetic structures, and the myth of independence. Centred on the relationship of capital's estrangement from our bodies, dreams and visions, the work seeks to explore the inevitable failure of anybody to individually meet the current demands of existing in a neoliberal landscape. Citing independence as a myth, “The Myth of Independence; is not just about the truth of being connected and interdependent on one another; it is also about the high value that gets placed on buying into the myth and believing that you are independent; and the high value placed on striving to be independent, another cornerstone of the ableist culture we live in.”
With a removal of this power, the work seeks to present vulnerability as a tool for mutually reliant connection and to explore means of empathy and compassion as a tool for resistance.
In our interdependent community, we must ask the questions - What would look like if we admitted the inevitable failure of any form of body to meet the demands of capitalist working structures? What would it look like if instead of offering up our sickness for scrutiny and acceptance, if instead there was a refusal as a potentially propulsive form of solidarity? How can we continuously reject individualism, the fabrication of scarcity and towers of hierarchical power? And, if we can dismantle our conceptualisation of power and governance, who gets to be in control of our bodies?
Presenting the sea as a plain along which to flee this world, we can be renegade pirates- stealing, bending, and taking our future into our own hands.