Freedomination Soapbox Protest Performance
Tuesday 6th March, 35 Chapel Walk, Sheffield
Part of the Fighting Talk Exhibition to celebrate international Women’s Day and the Centenary of (some) Women’s Right to Vote
by Davin Watne and Dawn Woolley (Performed by Dawn Woolley and volunteer performers)
Watne and Woolley would like to recruit performers to respond to extracts of feminist texts and the concept of freedomination. If you are interested in participating in the performance, please contact [email protected], identifying if you would like to speak for or against the empowering potential of objectification and commodification.
Freedom and domination appear to be mutually exclusive concepts. The soapbox protest performance aims to draw attention to this binary, through the concepts of objectification and empowerment, and propose to expose and explore a grey area in between.
Women in contemporary societies often experience a simultaneous mix of overt and subtle messaging in adverts that suggest a women’s power is confined to her attractiveness and desirability. There exists a plethora of consumer products promising to liberate women if they choose to objectify themselves. Freedomination recognises this paradox and seeks to expose it through dialog. Building on the success of their first collaboration in Hull, where Watne and Woolley presented a ‘Freedomination’ billboard and accompanying performance about freedom of speech, they will mark the suffragette centenary by exploring women’s promise of liberation through consumption.
The performance will turn part of the gallery into a temporary speaker’s corner or debating chamber. Performers on either side of the mezzanine will argue for and against the empowering potential of objectification and commodification. As individuals express their freedom of speech it will become increasingly difficult to hear what is said, demonstrating the concept ‘Freedomination’.
For more information about Hard Stop, the collaboration between Watne and Woolley, please visit;
https://www.a-n.co.uk/blogs/hard-stop
https://www.instagram.com/hard_stop/
