If I can't dance it's not my revolution

Ideas for the reimagining of public space

V&A Dundee, Dundee Contemporary Arts (DCA), and Art Night bring together a speculative discussion on what it might feel like to be truly comfortable, truly represented in public space - whether in galleries, football stadiums, streets or parliaments.

Four panellists will consider a utopic future city (let’s say Dundee)! What does it look like? Who makes the decisions? What does it feel like? How is it designed? Each speaker will present a manifesto relating to their own work, activism and ideas, imagining a future in which we all inhabit public space freely, with joy, confidence and power.

This collaborative event is prompted by The Male Graze, the Guerrilla Girls’ UK-wide Art Night commission, hosted in Dundee by DCA on Forfar Road. The commission looks back to the anonymous artist’s iconic 1989 poster Do Women Have To Be Naked To Get Into The Met? and asks if anything has changed or whether women are still only seen and considered through the male gaze. If I can’t dance it’s not my revolution invites an intersectional look at the position of women within public space and imagines what it could look like if things were better.

Chair: Akwugo Emejulu is Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick. Her research interests include the political sociology of race, class and gender and women of colour's grassroots activism in Europe and the United States. She is the author of several books including Fugitive Feminism (Silver Press, 2021) and Minority Women and Austerity: Survival and Resistance in France and Britain (Policy Press, 2017). She is co-editor of To Exist is to Resist: Black Feminism in Europe (Pluto Press, 2019).

Panellists:

Leslie Kern is a feminist urban scholar from Toronto, Canada. She is the author of Feminist City: Claiming Space in a Man-Made World (Verso, 2020).

Juliet Jacques is a writer, filmmaker, broadcaster and academic based in London. Her books include Trans: A Memoir (Verso, 2015) and Variations (Influx Press, 2021). Her essays, journalism and fiction have appeared in numerous publications; her short films have screened in galleries and festivals worldwide.

Shamiso Oneka is a designer, maker and critical urbanist. Architecture operates at every scale, from the personal to the political. As such, Shamiso explores material cultures and the construction of collective and individual narratives through interventions that are place and body specific.

Sorcha Pringle is a disabled activist, community musician, composer and creative facilitator based in Dundee. She uses music, poetry and storytelling to advocate for topic she is passionate about such as climate justice and disability equality, as well as promoting equal access to arts experiences for all.

If I can’t dance it’s not my revolution, is a comment attributed to anarchist political activist and writer, Emma Goldman (1869-1940).

This event will be BSL intepreted and live Closed Captions will be available.

Times

18.30 - 20.00

Location Online

Free

BSL interpreted

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