'an apprenticeship in queer I believe it was’
Live performance, with digital and 16mm footage, exploring the queerness of Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp.
Nina Wakeford, 'an apprenticeship in queer I believe it was’ 2016
Nina Wakeford’s performance draws on the ‘Embrace the Base’ protest at Greenham Common in 1982 during which around 30,000 women held hands in a peaceful protest against the continuing presence of nuclear weapons on British soil.
Using song, spoken word and readings of archival documents, Wakeford explores the capacity of the women's peace camp to transform the identity of those who lived there, creating a speculative agenda for what we might need for future queer social movements.
The work offers 'menstrual synchrony' as a mechanism or metaphor for queer recruitment beyond conventional definitions of love and desire.
Commissioned by the BFI and Wellcome in 2016 for Queering Love, Queering Hormones, Wakeford created and animated 30,000 frames of forget-me-not flowers. The pressed and framed forget-me-nots are residues of the process in which each flower was recorded on a single frame of 16mm film.
Nina Wakeford (UK) is a visual artist and sociologist based in London. Her work begins with the unfinished business of past social movements, and the challenges of revisiting the energies that these movements created. Recently, drawing on a personal collection of feminist materials from the 1970s and 1980s, Wakeford has made a series of film and performance works that involve singing as a way of attaching herself to objects or images. Exhibitions include Focal Point Gallery, Southend; Almanac, London; Glasgow International 2018.
Part of our Queer Futures public programme and exhibition.
Queer Futures is a public programme of events and exhibition exploring narratives for queer resistance, from mythology and folklore to speculative science fiction. The programme will include performances, screenings, discussions and workshops and each event will leave a contribution in the space to form a gradually expanding archive.