As part of the 2016 Liverpool Biennial, artists Sarah Browne and Jesse Jones presented a live video broadcast from News from Nowhere, a radical community bookshop in Liverpool. The broadcast is archived here and features audience contributions made online via Facebook, Twitter and Google+ using the hashtag #pparchive.
This broadcast explores historic state violence enacted through gynaecological means. Featuring material culture historian and research collaborator 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.