Susan Hiller’s 1973 Street Ceremonies
RE/SISTERS Talks: Joyful Militancy and Protest
Frobisher Auditorium 1, Barbican, London EC2
26 October 2023, 5.30pm
To complement the Barbican Art Gallery’s current RE/SISTERS exhibition exploring the role of women in protesting ecological destruction, a public programme of RE/SISTERS Talks includes Joyful Militancy and Protest, an event bringing together artists, photographers and academics for an afternoon and evening of talks and presentations ‘digging into the past and present of creative feminist dissent’.
The co-operative women’s photography agency Format, founded 40 years ago, documented creative acts of civil disobedience at Greenham Common and core members Maggie Murray, Melanie Friend and Joanne O’Brien will discuss their practice with Dr Noni Stacey.
Gallerist and curator Jane England then explores the film, audio and photographic archive of Susan Hiller’s 1973 work Street Ceremonies, where Hiller and over 120 participants used mirrors reflecting sunlight to ‘draw’ a continuous circle across the urban landscape of West London. Her presentation will include screening the previously unseen film footage of the event.
The event will end with a discussion between artists and thinkers Poulomi Basu, Nina Wakeford, Anna Feigenbaum and the RE/SISTERS Curator, Alona Pardo. The exhibition continues until 14 January 2024.