Audiovisual Cultures episode 28 – Art and Activisim with Emma Campbell automated transcript

welcome to the official cultures the podcast examining signed an image based cultural production I'm your host ball of their I'm delighted to be joined by artist and activist and Matt Campbell primarily practices photography and is a co director of Belfast based organization alliance for choice I'll be back after my talk with them in ways hi to get in touch with us tonight enjoy the discussion I am hello thanks so much for speaking with us today and hopefully we'll get some interested in information about your photographic work as well as your activism and that is our particular way you like to identify yourself would you like to tell us how you present yourself first I like to call myself %HESITATION activist artists I sometimes also where an academic caps with three days of benefit of having a child sabbatical without but usually I'm I have three interchange lack of activist artist and academic correct me we first met actually at an academic conference my memory is terrible but I've really stupid ability to be able to remember ready precise things like that so we've met I think at that contemporary gender performance in practice conference at queen's university Belfast in twenty thirteen this is not %HESITATION and he presented on your photographic series when they pick their hand site like skills if that's not too far back you go free I was wondering if you wouldn't mind describing not for S. and that'll help us he sends the sort of work and activism the ETA there's three different parts to the when they put their hands on skills and what I presented at conference I had done the first two parts the very first part was a video which was a short film I think it's just under five minutes I guess it's kind of a bike the decision making process or I guess the internal dialogue of somebody he decides that they are living in Northern Ireland and they need access to an abortion so bad mind I can started work in this in about two thousand and ten I'm at that time the public conversation around abortion haven't reached the almost cultural it's not like culture but kept inside the Techni saturation like people are talking about whether or not they agree with that it's very much on the cultural horizon at the minute but at the time it really wasn't and I wanted to show hi what was in the public forum one the words of politicians which were hugely lacking in understanding which were obviously mostly still are mostly but even more so than normal female voices I typed the transcripts from the two guys and asked them to debate on abortion we're two miles basically as soon as the part of devolved from Westminster to not not engine went those proposed a motion in order to ensure that the nineteen sixty seven I could never be extended %HESITATION that no change would ever be me into the eighteen sixty one act he is definitely at the extreme end along with a few other people cook from in P. sixteen year he was still alive in two thousand at that time as well a lot of quoting from the Bible and there's one or two dissenting voices in the form of mostly women two or three women politicians and one man called David Irvine and his coke one of his clothes he says hi we ever put ourselves in their shoes when they put their hands on next kills our choices and the bollocks so that's kind of where that came from I guess I'd like to because of its image of justice under Stockton very reminded me the skills obviously can be interpreted like to ski %HESITATION sufficiency is kind of hinted at something towards the sea and travel up so after reading tree and stump some of the coach Mike to status as you can imagine I wanted to be able to show Hari this is what the public conversation also on abortion and this is the kind of thing that would be hi we figure right what we do in the world is formed I'm especially something like stigma hi stick with problems of different directions that's something like that would be informed by not just your own personal close family feelings on the subject but then also your wider community whether that's a church community whether that's what community whether it's if you're in a football team or whether you're in a sewing circle whatever it is that's your psyche by a community what they think abortion and then there's the community at large and another case that would be going in Ireland on the public conversation around it was so lacking in young and lacking and really cutting because it's mostly women but not office the all women women at the sap center all think portion argument soon the physical narrative of the piece is I guess it churning from Norman island through the domestic crown and then I see such a bit of %HESITATION I guess you didn't matter force of nature and water and all that kind of stuff at the time lots of people thought it was maybe too so no I didn't actually pick compared to what we can talk about nine really doesn't seem so that's all especially when you got the voices of the politicians in the background I think that was the piece that you saw at the conference yeah and I was possibly still working on the photographs nine does not signed yet but you've got the video online as well haven't G. nine yeah because I re watched it again recently and I think it's even more poignant night because there's been no setting assembly for over a year and a half so the emptiness of the grinds of Stormont's the desolation tire that you pick up in the images I mean it's quite a scary form of foreshadowing and that's really interesting I watched it recently and I must watch it live really fascinated again you know just the innocence of the place you know this place car and they're not they're they're not doing their jobs and they're continuing to deflect these issues and then the next part of the series was up by the actual journey and so I met with activists in London from Americanization cold a person's point mark and they raise money and fund women coming over for abortions and they put them up in their houses or meter from the station or whatever help people need to they were in their infancy I think I started in two thousand and nine so they're still learning even though actually like that would happen before but they've been a little in the nineties and then studied new fashion of the organization can apply to US nine I use lots of the first person stories narratives that they have %HESITATION some from %HESITATION Rossiter she's an activist she's been doing very much that work from the seventies and I retraced the steps of people so I traveled to Birmingham Manchester Liverpool and London on Buscando clean that number of Chinese probably almost twenty journeys until the first year he was a bit more experimental because I didn't know what was going to taste so I take maybe four or five different cameras with me just to see what it would look like I even had a bustle of maybe photographs and thing in my mind actually a journey was really great photographs of places that people state and when they have to go over so that was the first thing I thought of and you know I did that as well but when I go back and happened on the journey I don't really really felt like the journey was a really important thing and so to me it's more just journeys and I took the stories with me on the box when I reflected about it afterwards because I come from quite %HESITATION I guess kind of a photo journalistic documentary background was taught my undergraduate by post the right type landed in people that are very much in that mold and can craft a lot of like what I eventually did for that it's going to cost I realized it was really a performance so like noon retracing the steps off women record at that position to me going through it was only one of the best trappers like you've been on the spot are you from that you thought it was from emigration control just got interesting I really tried then to do the pictures all from I'm the first person perspectives I didn't get a lot of research by fans to talk first do you K. in the seventies and eighties and they have lots of very core beliefs are wrong to not victimizing women in photography so if they were asked to go wouldn't make you know if they were commissioned to photograph and article this poor woman in it deprived area of London they would engage the people that ever photographed in and ask them I don't want to be portrayed instead of just going in and then being in fact in Patoka Fayette altering the people they were the subject of the photographs and so I guess I don't guess I know that I was very very much in the forefront of my mind when I was trying to do this first person thing whatever I produced it then it just seemed to resonate might not with everybody some people didn't get it I remember showing that the creators from other countries and they were a bit confused on the aisle I think that was because they didn't understand that abortion was illegal in Northern Ireland soon the network I had to do like a one oh one yeah they're like but it's taking them to and you know it was a cold musician west if I showed it to anyone from anyone from our end on that island in a hundred percent blacks the nation needed and so I think that resonance is what helped get the show in the copper house gallery I'm glad as he is of them one of the main guy says and his partner run the coverage gallery showed him the book tell me %HESITATION but he actually cried he never happened to me and put put your people never give somebody credit your photographs yeah I thought it was it is very emotional and %HESITATION then come back response was was something that kept thinking that I had to keep working and the firm I mean I'm just thinking back to I'm hoping I'm not miss remembering stuff that certainly for me watching this video they're so focused sometimes on the menu show you the tiny things a tiny seemingly incidentals and it just made me think about it if you do go on a journey like that that where you're maybe being very pensive very thoughtful it's a huge thing in your life today what is it that you focus on and what then do you remember about that day to remember those you I can't keep clutch onto those tiny things hi the raindrops fell you know for example that sort of thing definitely a sense of especially when you read the story so these people are going through something that for some of them it's an easy decision as in the very much know what they want to do because of the stigma surrounding it it makes it welcome back %HESITATION obviously it's about your body so lots of people forget that while women are needing access to abortion that means they're pregnant pregnancy even very early pregnancy can carry a lot of symptoms to your experience in this very orderly physical thing that you're going through like some people have to pretend not to experience morning sickness in order to hide there are you pregnant six of the people to know that are going for a portion all of this is going on and then at the same time you're having to think about it get into a study that you've maybe never been before making sure you can offer the right stuff in the box make sure you got your passport and all these extra things that some people would find stressful just to go out many pre remind typical on why you're feeling the effects of RT pregnancy while you're doing something that's heavily stigmatized and why you're doing something that is considered not just stigmatized but considered illegal in your own country so you do get a sense from the stories that way but that portion on one hand but in actual fact many of them talk about not knowing how to use the trams or not knowing if they were at the right because there's like two stations in the proposal and there's a million stations mountains and the right the right station or take it to cat and there's definitely not kind of worry about the details come straight and you know if people have made the decision to make the journey you also get a sense of man made this decision where complicated human being and so we will have lots of different shadings appoint up to session they've definitely made their mind up when they're going on this journey so the feelings that come through our especially when people are retelling the story afterwards it's like why did I have to do that another country by today afternoon J. that Johnny why did they have to be miscarrying or on the way back to Northern Ireland or Ireland I was trying to put myself as well you know there's also this very calm and I can I think in the Irish and northern Irish psyche all the trouble of emigration there somebody in everybody's lives he's moved away to work you know you're not living in Northern Ireland Northern Ireland for ten years there was something very familiar as well making the journey because I would have in my early twenties I would meet the cheapest possible journey which would have been a seventeen hour bus journey from London or whatever not to go to boulder and earn more money I was able to fly you casually but it meant that the physical journey was something that I felt would be easy to identify with for for anyone in Ireland and Northern Ireland for all the reasons that are tied to problems with hi we are treated the systems are available to assist us so since it isn't just even about abortion one of my tutor said to me if you realize you're trying to photograph something that's comfortable I like them thrown on the chat show ends its second let you know so I suppose I was trying to think of the photographs and some of them feel like maybe slightly psycho geographical some of them feel very dark and very hot I think some of them fade a bit here and a bit more like breaking away I think it was the second what was trying to date and then the ones on the bus you know you're just there for if you do not adjust your date you're there for ours and ours and ours and you'll be different people on your wondering why everybody else is on the bus and also the stories where people would like I wondered as I had this feeling that some I everybody knew when they were traveling through there is always different factors I guess Hey I was trying not to be too natural as well looking at them I feel that captures all the range of things they imposed feeling of shame that you have or that you imagine that it should be she M. followers back to those Brady Monday end stretches of time and then nothing that's what's happening and you count ready settle today anything and the tiredness of it it's tiring thing today even if you do travel for pleasure as you say or when I was living in Belfast I was back and forth to Britain for job interview you send for conferences for research whatever so you do when you do you see those images she do you relate to just stay active the journey the travel %HESITATION you know so I think the opposite they comes across very well and and expose sent to move on then from journeys but then the other element of journey being identification and passport photos and then to another project you've done a stiff passport butterflies it was hard to get from under the other there's another project in between maybe wasn't as successful as I felt I was talking very much about an individual's experience with the first project and then the second project I had an offer from women on web hi abortion pills to countries where it's legal and they've done a few take actions on they said I was allowed to go and use our photo archive and do whatever I wanted so I couldn't really turned on the offer you know it was a great offer and I got to go to to it's called a tree at eighty T. R. I. a and it's just fantastic library or archive all gender studies and history and emancipation of women in us or not because women web based in Amsterdam I use their images on some of them are very you know take on low quality digital cameras back in the early two Titans so the quality wasn't grand I was like I'm going to make this into something interesting and so I made them into collages with historical images from the National Library archives of item from around eighteen sixty one and when the act was I guess I was frustrated that a lot of the interaction you would get on talking about abortion in Ireland and Northern Ireland was staring on the basis of it was almost like a douche cheaper products company on those comments definitely happened any I got interviewed on the guardian or whatever and what was Diana or something in the media it was printed in England that would have come up quite a number of times I guess I was trying to think of a way to do it without service used in the archive images to maybe speak up a little bit about the idea of the Irish native American lives but also the impact of colonialism because obviously there is no law is a pretty strong there wasn't all before that so talk about it like that collage you know I've done collage for years and years ago but haven't done that in years and so it was a bit of an experiment but it didn't really resonate I still enjoy some access but and I don't think it resonated with people he didn't know enough to fight it it almost require you to do a little bit written before the pictures %HESITATION that for me meant that maybe there's been this feeling in the project the project after that was the passport photographs on the basis of the idea %HESITATION the first project I I'd been so careful I'm worried about stigmatizing people shares then I worried that I was making the woman invisible and it was you know was I making the woman in this one the abortion sicker and discipline and so I also realized from an interview I had with the student actually he said I I've noticed that the pro life side you know they used to feed a symmetry they used to you're not women being mothers a lot look see feel and materials but the giant completely out of proportion is blown up already floating in space or you creepy things like a pretend Tom to come in through the belly a lot of pro choice or pro reproductive justice imagery is really a step by an awful lot of text so it's just difficult how do you make something that they jumped and talks about the people that need access to abortions or talk about the people that are involved in fighting for access to abortions I'm so I originally thought maybe I'll get people to send me their passport photographs of do something with them and I haven't really thought I was going to get the first picture kind of tried with with those city to how the power of our gyms to what he does I didn't go away of sepsis when they wouldn't treat her she's seventeen weeks pregnant %HESITATION she clearly started to happen already miscarriage but because they could still detect fetal heart beating here and also there was an element of racism and that's what I've heard that Affleck who treats her family had given explicit permission to activists to use her image so that it would never happen again and so I tried was hers but I felt like her image was used so much already the reason I was using it was because of it being you so much and placards and posters and stuff around the pro choice argument I like I felt like it'd be slow because the pro choice side as it were how to Durst in mentoring and use and so then that's when I thought about getting activists to send me a card images and I did faxing to them might chop them up make things over the top of them when I was re photograph number then realized you know what contemporary way okay and photographs of yourself as a self pay it's very kind of Instagram and current activism is very smart what people call for swift feminism has a huge focus on social media and the sharing of images and memes and doc thanks and maybe I could use this form to better illustrate the ideas out there it was trying to insect no but %HESITATION but partial insight powerful images of activists in abortion seekers because there aren't any and and so we'll have news of all in tears and I photograph people of marches %HESITATION Nestle Kraft people choice events sometimes I specifically did a calling people cold under the studio okay and then %HESITATION I either ask them to tell me something but active it is %HESITATION are you something up like abortion activism of the time and I used three different apps then do you like a digital symmetrical image of the person and which I overlaid elements of activism are elements of the abortion rights struggle over them the reason I sort of the whole the butterflies the same was party today with my with my research had on I was looking into the relationship between feminism and photography feminism as we know it so feminism from if we imagine that began with the suffragettes even though we know whatever comes before that they would describe himself feminists have to touch it but if we imagine the suffragettes started country wide movement on an international movement on feminism then the token fee was born at the same time so photography and feminism for me felt like two tenths of maternity the first ever color photograph was taken Robert Maxwell and little tartan like roots acts almost exact political respecting it looks really like okay like or other fly like you I also had the fortunate that's it he %HESITATION natural history unit in Hartford I have a friend he married %HESITATION research scientists Houston is PhD in art so I don't know what else you would get the case but they had rows and rows of cases of bugs and butterflies and things and obviously lots of them have been collected to the eighteen hundreds I started to make these connections about Holly also the suffragettes were the first ever political great to be under political surveillance but the state and the met office and London thought state of the art at the time camera because the cameras up until then be very still in order to get the tear picture exposure times for so long the suffragettes knew this and they would shake her head vigorously so that they can get an accurate representation so whatever this new camera was developed I can't remember the name of it yes I they had a guy hi that match up for high in a fine invite Holloway women's prison to get accurate likenesses of them and then once they realized that discount why they were able to do a much better surveillance up on the suffragettes hello Lou they were being watched in this way the suffragettes Olson you depart the image I'm very much thank you very much so you know there's an awful she in that so much of the artistic links in the suffragette movement on the militant thanks to help and %HESITATION dined for normal narrative somewhat the suffragettes were but thanks very much you the part of art image %HESITATION they had chapters all across women and chapters of seamstresses artist there's an interesting link because arch often the first third level education establishments that women wear light intake so it makes sense that a lot of the suffragettes a lot of the already subject scheme from an art school background the used imagery and they there's a first ever woman pressed should hope for is a woman call Christine Brun who worked at the same time as the suffragettes and sheeted decent stick images off their marches and all the pageantry and they asked her to be there they knew they were going to get great pictures because she did pictures of military curry in a totally new way and in a way like a modern day this call you know I'm not a day of asking a photographer to turn up to your protest like and so that you know they need to carve the image and so I wanted to combine all of the soul to my head no and so one image because the law is from eighteen sixty one he was invented our coverage this color photographs I think it's eighteen thirty six and then the suffragette movement was nascent about time so all of these things felt like a really good mix he asked me something I don't I'm not sure came up with the idea of making the passports into a butterfly collection I thought it was something harmful up like the act all kidding the pain through the woman felt like it very easily showed this active state violence at the nine women abortions was a fight this appropriateness sexual behavior greatness of public conduct and all of these I think almost like a hang over from a Victorian era it's still this Victorian although we're not under that spoke about surveillance because look people like I asked her do and political work because also my activism I do not actually on the ground political stuff like kind of defending and escorting women to and from my strokes or helping women find out how they can get access to abortion pills I mean you that lots of us and how they are dressed as watched we then need is for certain when some of us had our offices and workspaces rated on international women's day two years ago and so it felt like everything came together for me in my head in this one idea and I'm still making them so at every Jenny I wanted to make twelve because of this problem in a week at that point the jumbled from the whole of Ireland and then once I very quickly and easily got twelve people I was like I I make forty because our site is trouble in a day and then it was forty quid a week and the only I've been to international conferences the people there it kind of hits a bit more to global struggle as well I've taken progressive man our activists but I still haven't made them into butterflies because I'm not sure what to do with that yet or whether it needs to be something slightly different yeah the butterflies it's still in progress I was and I'm still trying to get as many women as possible I've reached out to some colleagues and comrades who you were campus thing I'm working really hard in the run up to the referendum I didn't ask them in the middle of it all because it was a very long time I'm very intense but some of them got back to me now I I've got some of their images this is well there's some people that I feel like the project will be finished unless I've got them into you know I counted in every activists but there's some people I feel like I come to the site yes I want to make sure that I have you know black women's bodies an immigrant women's bodies in there I want to make sure that there's trans men and women there's no binary people on there I want to make sure that that piece is as intersectional as our activism trying to me I shown in very old etymology boxes and then you name modern actions and then online I guess they just like portrait images but interestingly the image is already been used there's a researcher call Sally Shelton at the university campus she did her research paper called can the state controlled swallowing it was but access to abortion pills and she didn't know what it means to use %HESITATION contacted me after she interviewed me as well the actress for books and then contacted me about using some of the images so it's been used for that and then also %HESITATION there's a part that's just I called reimagining global abortion politics okay they've used a selection of the butterflies on the front of that so I thought that was great if you can manage it excellent like there's an awful lot in those images and they're kind of it is but it sounds like they need an awful lot of explanation but actually when people see them they don't need the explanation like the last one so it's a very layered there's a lot of texture in them there's a lot to you don't just sort of flip through them you can actually start one for quite a long time to get a lot of information from it %HESITATION yeah because I should say as well that I I'm sure there's a magnifying glass there because they're you know they are the size of passport photographs to get very intimate with them that's fascinating because I've only seen them online so there Baker online but that actual active peering out them probably it would be quite perform with meaningful when I was reading online fight as well a friend of ours signed an appropriate hall baby like the idea of butterfly collecting being inappropriate healthy for women as well yeah especially if you were an unattached or single you see you know the aspiring middle classes that some Heidi Fleiss collecting once one of the things that young single women were a light to it seemed a fitting and there's something about it as well that talks a lot about femininity I think you know the home by expressions of femininity or what is feminine that's kind of encapsulated especially and then on a Miller creature like a butterfly partly because the work is fine but it's a fight not an unbiased I've never tried to say that this is non biased piece of work despite much client problem I very clearly stated position on it never made the work I couldn't recall press gallery edit any prices or anything on them because I want people to access the images and use them because of what they are and easy to access for people I think is well it's important to note I think you touched on this earlier as well the difference between those images because that like a lot of the thesis and the more smiling faces are happy faces are trying to help you faces where human to the sorts of faces that in contrast with the order violence of some anti choice poster enhance that kind of thing it's a real tonic anyway and I hadn't really thought actually but the idea that there weren't ready images attached to the pro choice movement I think somebody like Civita risks becoming a martyr figure she was the person Alcentra from so I feel like it's a whole other I wanted to paper and it just itself but I think there's something in the idea that once this mini state this news person the TV version of the handmaid's tale with manta and you see a person off that red and white outfit more abortion or reproductive system or even the next act sexual violence this image has night brilliant may become a kind of shorthand for each state oppression of women yet because we haven't really had anything else I can think of anything quite so powerful and the other thing about it is that it doesn't limit you to a request or a gender even necessarily again the way the eagerness in which that image has been taken up unused I thank shows high much something like that is needed how much more of these images are needed absolutely I haven't seen any episodes of them in steel and I haven't read to pick but I know what that image is you it's so distinct if you see it and you go all right that it's not OK a crash and you know you just associate that language with the image of the types of cloaks that the women are made to wear I'm really well I'm feeling the other thing about butterflies which I have mentioned is it not a especially with the result in Ireland my ideal version all exhibiting them would be tough like almost like a swarm of butterflies to so many because you know it really felt that will start activism when if we had a run this and to its intent but there may be five or ten people would turn up to meetings sometimes of something hitting use we get more people than it would fade away again very quickly and then we saw over the last decade nine we saw this gradual but steady progressive movement and lots of young women involved in the movement lots of feminists who were involved in the seventies come back and we joined in the activism really feels like it's galvanized hold not just two generations of hold sway of all women and trans men and other portions stickers all over Ireland and Northern Ireland suddenly feels like we're at that tipping point where we can't be ignored anymore and I think what I want to get right with the next P. Sean's hopefully off to put our prices up and the feeling that are everywhere night kick yeah and they're taking flights I suppose this is another metaphor that can be used as a one of the images from the race next question which is often trademark I don't know if you knew last yes yes ma'am yeah it was a great show I am part of array which the studio group in Belfast we had a studio show there and I did one for him all of them sitting in a very all kind of formation and then the next tram I tried to have it so that they were all trying to burst type of the frame on I had some of the family some of them just directly on to the wall it was kind of testing that idea yeah I think it worked on I think the next exhibition like going to play a bit more yeah yeah there's other ideas while pushing through a border which is something that is needed at the moment as well now that the Republicans as replacing a portion so that northern Ireland's is tiny that'll blow both people not getting health care that they need and the awareness has really resonate mean living in England for four years nine months I was teaching in universities it was shock and high level students know by north in art and in general yeah thank not me having to explain to them I'm from the same country as you so that in a broad sense but also the not knowing that abortion was illegal and part of the U. K. exemptions would find not quite distressing you know and whatever their own story was the idea that they kids and something happened unexpectedly that vacates sort products and they had options and choices S. A. got pregnant during the studies whatever the idea that they wouldn't be able to say that was very distressing them and so they would actually then start to talk to their friends we that you know it was really wonderful to see that awareness spreads and Britain I think they're so wonderful and delicious irony in the fact that the D. U. P. you know we know nobody ever really publicly stated but we know that they're not sitting here because %HESITATION enjoyed wide in the tale of the dog too much in Westminster the spotlight it was shown on them whenever it was clear that Theresa may needed them for the argument actually kind of put them in the nasco it shone a light on gay marriage but it Sean a light on the fact that they haven't been setting government it's a light on the fact that even people who work Tory supporters I'm traditionally seen as leaning towards the right in the U. K. more cast to be associated with them at the time and up Stella Creasy launched the amendment on to the queen's speech which forced the government to say %HESITATION joined with a deep make us any less pro choice on in a way the P. U. P. accidentally chaos funding access in England obviously we've been working very hard in the background to make sure the conditions are right but when the market was brilliant and I think it also shines a light on like devotion in Northern Ireland as we know it's very different to devolution in Scotland and Wales and I think brexit on these issues have shown like on holiday dysfunctional actually boils on high much really the Westminster government were always just trying to ignore it I'm hoping that it wouldn't close any difficulties and your comments from recent secretaries of state like to redo the Philly or saying things like you know what you're talking about legacy issues and that you know eventually northern's just might have to get over it under even a sense from her I find it having also lived in England and then walked to programs where they talk about the history of the conflict it's very clear that there's no consideration of what the British government's rule act you know and I'm speaking to somebody who grew up in east Belfast okay fine teas the people I grew up around we're all unionists who very much wants to be part of the union but I think it very much shows stop there's no teaching of Irish and northern Irish history I'm not sure because to me that it's still a colonial blocked it's still something that they haven't dealt with properly and with brexit and everything it's just showing how it's foolish and heart and and I don't know if you remember the quotes from parts Thompson and Jacob Rees Mogg but the borders I can if you like you zero yeah and then it funny hi abortion noise kind of in the mixed doubles worse before hand it would have been one of those things all yeah we'll sort out your impression after we worry about this either all these other types of oppression you know there's always is better now I feel like it stop city scene or something core and central to the values of the D. U. P. versus the values of runes you know people if there's anything else you think you would like to say please stay if you wanna plug websites pages any publications or year exhibitions coming up please work away reimagining global politics and then there's another one I did lots of collaboration to ship all Kansei and we who wrote a chapter on art and activism and art into Northern Ireland thank you for taking the time to chat with me about %HESITATION less it's been really fascinating I used to write because I don't get to talk about if I often ask me question I'm I'm all for like ten minutes they do high schools and you get a lot of questions about the activism part not so much about the arts part of what you do now so where is intended do the other way around nah it's good to change stuff once I got off the phone here than I have to be boring what I call it that Appel activism sales to people looking thing all that stuff that has to happen so that's the point isn't to to raise a concern maybe there are things that a lot of history are those invisible boring online or just talking to people and unseen work it's always important to remember that people every day and on the same things as well as very physical active things yeah like tonight so get ready to do a workshop with Scalia died tonight there's a few women's groups that we have some connection to us because we did suffragette workshops with them while they were cold challenges and choices of twenty first century and to some of what feminism but now I'm going back today and much more the reason we did it is because the last stage in the course of the six week course talks about abortion reproductive rights because we felt like especially a lot of the working class areas you could win the first week and say right we're gonna talk about abortion we had to introduce ideas of Ptolemy and remove the stigma of the word feminism first but anyway one of all the groups by the end but locked up %HESITATION we got funded with the open university today more workshops with people put an exhibition we were part of cold might be my life so it traveled all around the U. K. and included my journey photographs I was in London at one point as well and at that point I also think it was it was a picture produced some of that had individual stories and %HESITATION that stories from all over the UK and today Northern our stories we're gonna do is annoy them and specific budget but the brilliant thing about this in a way is a common one in our street in there shows you how much more of a struggle and how you create drama it making people travel so we're we're gonna watch one of these groups tonight and they're they're all excited about it because it's been like a year and a half since the last workshop so me I'll be fine on it you know what C. compared to teach in an underground environment sometimes he would do presentations in an underground environment and let Chile get nothing back that when you go into these workshops catch up them up for questions on them telling each other stories and it's just it's so but now I just look at what happened with us straight up to the referendum was unbelievable not prepared for it I remember when I booked a family holiday to Lanzarote eight full week after the referendum to tidy %HESITATION that's up and you know give it enough time just not in the office what happened we had to temporarily recruit other medium medium level for alliance for choice it was actually everybody's phone off the hook for two weeks %HESITATION nations coming in and what sort of shut outs from activists in this life and then a bit more awareness from eminence in England as well really helpful we send stuff over to the London our script but they sell it for we also put their offense late in our email grip on a lot of our email group will be because we were at the labor party conference last year so lots of our supporters are actually English as well unless I have to say hello my tears in the run up to the referendum after the referendum collapsed in tears all folks amaze and kindness and people so we sent %HESITATION such and such is the name of whatever it was awesome somebody still needed a box of time which is just stuff like that but it's just sort of let me think I enjoy books thank you very much much miss grace many thanks again to MF for helping us begin to think about art and activism and the ways that the personal is often the political you can learn more about her work and see examples on M. S. website at Emma Campbell dot co dot UK and I've included links to many of the other artists scholars and organizations am I mentioned in the extended show notes available for patrons Spieth Petri on dot com forward slash P. A. prior suggestions for topics to be added to your list or if you'd like to be a cast we are not AP cultures on Twitter and Facebook under email as audio visual cultures at G. mail dot com thanks so much for listening and for all your support all the best and catch you next time