Walking:Holding - Talk

xx CONNECTIONS BETWEEN FRAGMENTED HI/STORIES

Great Britain / 2011 / 45'
Performance ono-to-one

“It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognise, accept and celebrate these differences.”
– Audre Lorde

Born out of a series of ʻholding hands experimentsʼ, with both same sex and mixed sex couples, the piece asks people to challenge prejudices in the flesh, and experience firsthand what it is to walk in someone elseʼs shoes - or hands. The work is focused on exploring the experience of queer lifestyles and identities within a city, and at the same time is a broader experiment of what can be learned when two strangers share an intimate moment in public. It also asks questions of the social diversity and cultural codes within each city where it takes place.

Walking:Holding is a subtle, experiential performance that involves one audience member at a time walking through the city holding hands with a range of different people on a carefully designed route. The performers, or ‘hand holders,’ within the piece are a group of local people from a range of different sections of the community, different ages, races, genders, sexualities and social backgrounds who create a diverse and rich experience for the audience members. It’s about flesh to flesh experiences of difference. It hopes to encourage greater understanding and tolerance amongst people who experience it, and to open up new possibilities for ways of being in public space, and ways of being with each other.

Participants talk at Pritličje on October

Organization: City of Women. In collaboration with Pritličje.