This article will look at three case studies of performative political protest, where female activists are raising awareness of the precarious conditions of their lived experience in economic neo-liberalism. The research is focused on links between Focus E15 Mothers Group in London, the #protestiram movement in Macedonia and #direnkahkaha (resist laughter) in Turkey. I will analyse these protest movements’ performative acts and argue that these acts are strategically used to draw attention to the inequality faced by women.
In this article, we reflect on our collaborative practice-as-research piece Project Finding Home, that arose from our experiences of working and living in the UK as ‘non-British’ citizens. Engaging with other refugee and migrant artists over three years, we worked deliberately as co-researchers and co-creators in a non-hierarchical dynamic to produce a series of four films reflecting on how we find home when it is so impacted by government policy, social and cultural integration, and intergenerational relationships. This article focuses on two of these films, one made with the participatory theatre company of Sanctuary, PSYCHEdelight, and one made with conceptual artist, Khaled Barakeh. Through observations of their work, we discuss how their respective uses of comedy (in PSYCHEdelight’s show Mohand and Peter) and visual representation (in Barakeh’s installation On the Ropes) resist singular views of migrant narratives. Additionally, we analyse our creative and ethical processes for making films with them about their work. Discussing how their aesthetics informed our processes for showcasing who they are and what they do as artists to a wider audience, we examine how artistic practice, its documentation, and its dissemination can question dominant aesthetic norms and existing migration and cultural policies in the UK and Europe.
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