This spring season we further explore the idea of queer creative health through experiments in radical mapping praxis - collective mapping practices that build on counter- and anti-mapping traditions to challenge the social structures that drive health inequities for queer communities, join us for the opening.
The maps we use every day help us navigate streets, but they rarely help us navigate belonging, grief, desire, or survival
- River Újhadbor
Researcher and theatre practitioner River Újhadbor has co-developed a framework for radical mapping praxis, gathering examples, methods, and provocations from different movements, geographies, and struggles to inform our approach.
We understand this praxis as an ongoing cycle of collective action and reflection: a way of mapping that foregrounds relation, partiality, and transparency. Through collective, experimental processes, we seek to strengthen queer wellbeing by tracing and transforming the forces that make us sick, exhausted, and excluded, while cultivating networks of care, joy, and autonomy. - River Újhadbor
Our space will be filled with ‘desire lines’ created by artist Jacob V. Joyce - images of outdoor cruising zones in the UK as well as those taken from Trinidad and Jamaica (where British colonial laws render queer intimacy a fugitive activity). Desire lines are pathways that bypass official, longer or less logical routes, forms of everyday civil disobedience that rely on us following our feelings and intuition.
Experience the launch of our new season with a full day of events:
1 PM - Free Levantine lunch buffet, by Bisan Bites, celebrating the rich flavours of her Palestinian heritage.
2 PM - Researcher and theatre director, River Újhadbor, in conversation with Bulbul and Dunya Kalantery.
3 - 4.30 PM - Creative writing and mono-print workshop with artist Dunya Kalantery on the topic of subterfuge. (Spaces are limited and will be allocated on a first come basis).
4 - 5.30 PM - Return to queer South London history with Catherine Hahn and the Queer Along the River project.