Abstract/Summary

23 April -2 June 2019 Open Hand Open Space, St.Laurence Church, Greenham Common Control Tower and the University of Reading Un)Commoning Voices & (Non)Communal Bodies is a series of workshops, performances, and an exhibition, interrogating the relationship between artistic practices and protest movements via the performative scores of collective bodies and voices. The interdisciplinary program was inspired by the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp which was active from 1981 to 2000. It was established by women to protest nuclear weapons being sited near Reading at RAF Greenham Common. Building on the conversations around creative commoning and performative knowledge production, we aim to provide spaces for negotiating the differences between the ‘common(s)’ – the general interrelatedness of human realities, the ‘(un)common(s)’ – generative destructive dynamics – and the ‘(under)common(s)’ – the less socially visible aspects of organization and interaction. We ask; what do hegemonic scores look like, and what would alternative or activist scores sound like? Can voices and bodies undermine fear and invite empathy? Can the repetition of darkness create light? How do we, as individual subjects, participate in these collective acts, or refuse them? Curated by Maayan Sheleff and Sarah Spies