The Truncheon and the Speculum at the Liverpool Biennial

As part of the 2016 Liverpool Biennial, artists Sarah Browne and Jesse Jones present a live video broadcast, The Truncheon and the Speculum, from News from Nowhere, a radical community bookshop in Liverpool:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32OBKL-GLO8

You can watch the broadcast on YouTube using the link above, and also join in the conversation here on Facebook, or via Twitter and Google+ using the hashtag #pparchive.

This broadcast explores historic state violence enacted through gynaecological means. Featuring material culture historian Dr. Lisa Godson and self-identified “cyborg witch” Klau Kinky of Catalan collective GynePunk, this event identifies the Contagious Diseases Acts of the 1860s as a key moment in the legislation of state violence against women in Ireland and the UK.

With this event, the artists and their guests propose a supplanting of the role of the state-sanctioned broadcast into domestic spaces. The online audience is invited to discuss and challenge the terrestrial illegalities of reproductive rights for women.


The Truncheon and the Speculum is part of In the Shadow of the State, a co-commission of Artangel and Create Ireland; also supported by ART: 2016, the Arts Council's programme as part of Ireland 2016, the centenary of the Easter Rising in the Republic of Ireland, Dublin City Council and Heart of Glass (St. Helen’s).

Find out more:
http://www.create-ireland.ie/in-the-shadow-of-the-state
+
https://www.artangel.org.uk/project/in-the-shadow-of-the-state/?sb=liverpool-biennial#liverpool-biennial
+
http://www.biennial.com/2016/exhibition/artists/sarah-browne-and-jesse-jones