Human Musings

Human Measure is the debut UK solo exhibition by internationally renowned transgender artist Cassils.

Cassils is a visual artist who makes their own body the material of their performances. Cassils transforms their body through training, nutrition and the acquisition of athletic skills, and then defiantly exposes their body. The artist knows this will solicit lurid and intrusive gazes, but Cassils work incites voyeurism in order to subvert it.

Human Measure presents a 10-year survey of screen and print-based work at a critical moment for advocacy.

Working in live performance, sculpture, photography, sound design and film, Cassils contemplates LGBTQI+ violence, representation, struggle and power.

Cassils sent a personal message: “The work in this exhibition goes beyond the logic of identity politics, beyond the meat of my own body.

I have been working towards the revolutionary project of anti-patriarchal, anti-racist and social transformation in my own small/humble way.

Everyone is welcome with open arms – with special love and mindfulness towards our trans/GNC/non-binary folks.

To those of us deemed “marginalised” including but not limited to those without citizenship, indigenous peoples, non-white people, non-cis male people, our elders, our fairies and grand dukes – we are so much more. This work is for you.”

Human Musings was the one night only performative response to Human Measure. Maz Hedgehog, writer and spoken word poet together with mandla rae, an agender queer Zimbabwean writer and performer weaved in and amongst the gallery exhibition.

We listened and followed these different wordsmiths gaze upon and respond to the pieces of art. It was an interesting and thought provoking experience.

More photos can be seen here.

Coming Out and Communism

The veteran gay and human rights activist Tony Openshaw talks with Don Milligan about his new book ‘The Embrace of Capital – Capitalism from the inside’ due to come out in April 2022. This fascinating conversation focuses on Don’s life negotiating his gay identity within various left movements that he has been active in over a number of decades.

A synopsis of The Embrace Of Capital:

The “spectre of communism” which Karl Marx confidently evoked in 1848 is now nothing more than a ghostly and ghastly nightmare, without form or substance. This is because working people have developed a love-hate relationship with capitalism. They hate insecurity, inequality, and greed, and love civic and political freedom. They love mass consumption, and accept the logic of commerce. Barreling along through wars, revolutions, epidemics, and crises of all sorts, working people in their millions have consistently dumbfounded and dismayed the left, by their refusal to countenance any alternative to the capitalist mode of life. We have to ask: Is it possible to reverse this reality, and once again talk of the necessity of communism?