I’ll be performing at Body Landscapes Festival of Performance Arts, Union København (Nørre Allé 7), at 18:30 on the 9th of October.
Some slides from the performance scratches:
In other news, here’s Lou Hazelwood & Barbara Grabher’s project I helped voice last year:
And here are some pics from the graduation event of the GUSAC sound art summer school at Gotenberg University of Mains, Germany last month:
Photo credit: Martina Pipprich, Mainz
Finally, it was so awesome to be in Aberdeen in time to perform at the fantastic trans & non-binary to the front edition last week – for those who were unable to attend, here’s one of the poems I wrote especially for the event; writing three poems in the space of a week isn’t easy, especially when you’re traditionally identifying as poetrary non-binary.
The one featured here had been long in the making through developing the concepts and began over two years ago at Pansy Boy‘s set during the first BBC Contains Strong Language festival in Hull; and has since been silenced by a so-called journalist.
Not any more.
Here it is in entirety:
for Pansy Boy
Annabel Strange, Aberdeen, September 2019
This isn’t really poetry
It’s the story
Of a thought process
Let’s start a movement.
Flit
Research has shown that those of us that move
Are more perceptive of movement
(Citation needed)
(Jola & Calmeiro 2017)
And what is movement?
Pansy
It’s a language
What do we tell people with our movement?
How we feel.
Homoerotic
And that flit feel of the pansy,
The classic dipped wrist *
Which is usually more something like this *
It’s a sign of a fluidity of movement
Ergo,
Fluidity of perception
Empathy.
So I saw Pansy Boy speak
And found that ‘pansy’
Was a homophobic slur
It comes from the Latin – Pense- to think.
So
to the ‘heteronormative’,
To flit
and think
is seen
As an insult
#gofuckyourselves
Now,
Having the ridonculous body I do,
I often have to tell myself to pull it together
I used to call myself a ‘pussy’ – like, ‘stop being such a pussy’.
And I saw that quote it now turns out was misattributed to Betty White
*citation needed*
That we shouldn’t ‘grow a pair’ –
because
It’s balls that are weak –
The humble ‘pussy’
Well,
Those things can really take a pounding.
*no citation needed*
So, this word was out,
in the context of my inner monologue and, well, it’s oppressive.
So what could I replace that word with?
‘Stop being such a pansy’
But then as I heard Pansy Boy speak, I realised,
That word, too, is the tool of the oppressor.
The ‘hate-riarchy’, if you will.
So I thought to myself,
What word should I replace it with?
And as I announced, my on the spot epiphany in the Q&A of Pansy Boy’s show, and much to the chagrin of my buttoned down and heteronormative then girlfriend,
That we shouldn’t be shaming ourselves for being weak.
The act of consideration means an act of replacement,
Or,
As we’re working on repairing our world
We get pause to see what needs replacing
from what comes from a hate model we no longer need
Think.
Feel.
Move.
See.
Empathise.
Let’s start a movement.
Annabel Strange 