12 Hour Acting Up

About

Cooper Gallery in Dundee invite you to join our 12 Hour Acting Up and revitalise She Town’s much lauded spirit of heckling – the art and craft of speaking loud and proud to those who claim to be ‘in charge’.

Reverberating with the attitude, poise and pose of intersectional feminist and queer agitation and dissent, The Ignorant Art School’s Sit-in #4 Outside the Circle culminates with an international coalition of artists, activists, culture workers, educators, students, musicians, performers, writers, and feminist and LGBTQ+ communities in Scotland and from around the world.

Celebrating the socially embedded acts of self-knowledge emblematic of feminist and queer activism, 12 Hour Acting Up broadcasts the difficult yet profound truth of lived experience which feminist and queer activism courageously speaks to power.

Defiantly empowering the experiences of the oppressed and marginalised, 12 Hour Acting Up will channel feminist and queer ‘practices of knowing’ through a constellation of affective memories and critical reflections expressed as collective readings, sewing, singing, dancing, storytelling, talks, performances, street theatre, round table discussions, screenings and workshops.

Unfolding the possibilities of assembly, collective actions and spirited protest 12 Hour Acting Up will reveal, in all their radical complexity and zeal, the global legacies and future promise of feminist and queer acts of emancipatory pedagogy. But much more than this 12 Hour Acting Up desires to share Audre Lorde’s assertion of ‘the erotic’ as ‘the knowledge and use of which we are now reclaiming in our language, our history, our dancing, our loving, our work, our lives.’

Attendee notes

• Attend full event or part
• arrive anytime during event
• Ajamu X and Phyllis Christopher invite you to wear black t-shirt/jumper if you would like your photographic portait

Schedule

10.30am
Registration

MORNING
11am–12.45pm

Saoirse Amira Anis
'From Within Outward'
Collective Dance

Erin Farley
She Is A Problem Still
Storytelling

Tako Taal
"It's your f***ing talent they were after"
Reading

Amelia Jones
Queer Feminist Disorientations in Art and Performance
(Strategies for Survivance under Fascism)
Keynote

Haven for Artists/Dayna Ash
Courage
Film Screening

LUNCH
12.45–1.45pm

Phyllis Christopher and Ajamu X
Darkroom/Studio Intimacies: A Photographic Encounter with Phyllis Christopher and Ajamu X
Temporary Photography Studio

Womanifesto
WeMend
Collective Sewing

Unlearning Circle: Study Area
Exhibition Viewing

AFTERNOON
1.45–6pm

Sam Ainsley and Erica Eyres
Why Do You Want This Job?
In-conversation

Karen Di Franco
On Readings
Talk

Sutapa Biswas, Althea Greenham and Sabrina Henry
'To whom do I owe the woman I’ve become?’
Roundtable

Coffee/Tea Break

Dima Hamdan
Blood Like Water (2023)
Film Screening

Peter Tatchell
Outrageous Activism
Keynote

Cornelia Sollfrank
The mode is the message, the code is the collective – Self-organisation as an aesthetic practice
Performative Talk

Sheba Chhachhi
Excerpts from Todo Bandhan (Break the Bind): Feminist Songs Compilation, 1985
Collective Listening

Shilpa T-Hyland
Together We Breath, Together We Move
Workshop
(sign-up throughout the day)

Phyllis Christopher and Ajamu X
Darkroom/Studio Intimacies: A Photographic Encounter with Phyllis Christopher and Ajamu X
Temporary Photography Studio

Womanifesto
WeMend
Collective Sewing

Exhibition Viewing

Comfort Break

EVENING
6.15–8pm

Akwugo Emejulu
The vibes are off: Understanding racialised atmospherics in left activism
Keynote

Audre Lorde
Uses of the Erotic
Collective Listening

Phyllis Christopher, Ajamu X, Laura Guy
Darkroom/Studio Intimacies: A Photographic Encounter with Phyllis Christopher and Ajamu X
In-conversation

DINNER
8–9pm

Unlearning Circle: Study Area
Exhibition Viewing

NIGHT
9–11pm

nussatari x naafi
utter / ance
Performance

Shola von Reinhold
Reading

Dagmar Schultz
Audre Lorde: The Berlin Years 1984 to 1992
Film Screening

Ends

______

 
Image credit
Phyllis Christopher, Dyke March Window, 1999

Funding support

The Ignorant Art School Sit-in #4 at Cooper Gallery, DJCAD is supported by the National Lottery through Creative Scotland and the Goethe-Institut Glasgow.