Becoming Us

Abstract

This group article explores personal and political experiences of six UK based artists who came together in 2016 to create a performance project ‘About Us’ and have continued to support each other throughout the pandemic. The article is a collage of writings and images which convey the personal stories of each author and reflect on differences and alliances concerning gender, racial identity, age, sexuality and social class.

Lansley introduces the context in which this diverse group came together. She identifies the research themes explored in ‘About Us’, which threw up fundamental questions concerning what it is to be both human and animal, and why we oppress and demonize other animal species. Green discusses these ideas from her perspective as a black woman, for whom the position that we are all animals is complex, raising issues concerning slavery and scientific racism. Huss discusses taking on the lease of an old miners’ institute in a quest to bring back cultural life to an impoverished area of Northumberland. She tracks historical and cultural links between the closure of the pits in the 80s and the present, identifying forms of protest which brought miners' unions and artists together in solidarity. Taylor draws on writings by the philosopher Jacques Rancière to explore finding solidarity across difference within both his teaching and performance work. He discusses how the group supported him to develop a language that expressed intimate thoughts and feelings about being a gay man. Early uses poetry and parable to question our relationship to the planet and all the species we share it with. He interrogates the Judeo-Christian notion of hierarchical ‘civilization’ and explores the intelligence of trees. Mackinnon reflects on her position as a black woman and mother in a world that strives for unity, but continues to divide. She discusses how the group draws on strengths as movement and dance makers to share differences in ways that enable growth and understanding.

Notes

1 Jacques Rancière is the author of The Ignorant Schoolmaster (1987), which explores the ‘eccentric’ theory and destiny of Joseph Jacotot (1770–1840), a French professor who, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, called for the intellectual emancipation against received wisdom concerning the instruction of the ‘lower classes’. In his keynote lecture referenced in this article, Rancière aligns Jacotot’s theories with the issue of spectatorship: ‘Emancipation … begins when we dismiss the opposition between looking and acting … it starts when we realise that looking is also an action … The spectator is active, just like the student or the scientist. He (sic) observes, he selects, he compares, he interprets’ (2007).