A Soft Rebellion in Paradise

Solo Exhibition at Millennium Gallery, Sheffield: January 14th to March 12th 2023. Audience numbers were 13,340. The exhibition included the short film 'A Soft Rebellion in Paradise' plus a new piece of work - a velvet and satin banner with text 'A Soft Rebellion in Paradise', which was draped across the entrance to the space. 27 metres x 70cm. This enquiry focuses on the post-industrial city of Sheffield, its female citizens, and their empowerment, explored through filmed participatory performance, and extends Brown’s methodologies developed in Detroit from 2015-2017. Seeking to re-awaken forgotten history and re-imagine current political activism by demonstrating what community cohesion and collective action can look like now, the resulting film serves as both reminder and catalyst. Central to this is the questioning of the systematic historical and contemporary silencing of women through the performance of a series of ‘Soft Rebellions’; an approach Brown developed in Detroit as a way of employing the collective energy of protest, with participants dancing, eating and applauding in places where it is considered transgressive. Following the ‘Me Too’ movement (2017), and the centenary of British female suffrage (2018), Brown’s film A Soft Rebellion in Paradise references the city’s history of female activism, where in 1851 the Sheffield Women’s Political Association was the first British organisation to call for female suffrage. The film took the utopian-sounding ‘Paradise Square’, historically used for protest, as its location with over 200 women performing Soft Rebellions including clapping, being silent and chanting the words of a commissioned poem by Geraldine Monk, with sound design and score by musician DIE HEXEN. Using an all-female crew, production team and cast, the film was commissioned by Sheffield Culture Consortium’s ‘Making Ways’ initiative, funded by an Ambition for Excellence award from Arts Council England. The film was commissioned in February 2018, and following a period of research and field work into the history of Paradise Square and, historical and contemporary activism in the city, filming took place on Sept 2nd 2018 with participants invited directly and through open call. The film was premiered in Paradise Square in Sheffield on Saturday 8th June 2019 as part of DocFest film festival. Chloë Brown was selected for the £40,000 Making Ways commission through competitive tender and interview, to create a non-conventional piece of public art for the city of Sheffield. The resulting enquiry took film-making as an auto-ethnographic embodied form of research methodology to explore the research question. The proposed film focused on the continual history of Sheffield as a place of political activism and empowerment, seeking to highlight the voices of women, which are so often lost or not heard in historical and contemporary narratives. To address this, Brown specifically aimed to involve only women, and those who identify as women, as the participants in and the producers of the film. Following selection, the enquiry focused on an initial period of fieldwork and historical research, that included meetings with local historians, activists and non-profit groups to gather information on activism and protest in Sheffield (both historically and contemporarily). Brown focused on the role of women’s voices and the history of female empowerment in the city, which was informed contextually by the ‘Me Too’ campaign and the centenary of female suffrage in Britain in the same year as the commission was received. Among other findings Brown learnt that the Sheffield Women’s Political Association (SWPA) was founded in the city in 1851, the first organisation in the country to call for female suffrage, over fifty years before the Emmeline Pankhurst founded the Women’s Social and Political Union. This is not celebrated or widely-known in the city. Brown determined that from the 1790s until the early 20th century, the SWPA, the Sheffield Chartists and many other political movements would gather in Paradise Square to protest and the square was the site of vast, often dramatic political meetings. Following a ban on Chartist meetings in 1839, The Chartists would hold silent protests there and this knowledge was used directly in the development of the film. The photograph of a large crowd in Paradise Square taken c.1900, found in Sheffield City Council archives, proved to be an important piece of visual research. The all-male crowd are seen crammed into the square, their reason for gathering unrecorded. In the windows of the building at the top of the square the indistinct faces of women and girls can be seen. Brown discovered that the building was the House of Help for Friendless Girls and Young Women, an organisation that supported destitute and abused women and girls. These excluded and silenced women became the focal point for the film and the development of a series of ‘Soft Rebellions’ performed by the female participants. The poem, Soft Rebellions in Paradise Squared by Sheffield-based poet, Geraldine Monk, was commissioned by Brown and was performed by the participants and Monk. Brown asked Monk to create a text that was part chant, part song and part incantation, and this was developed through monthly meetings between Brown and Monk. Mary Beard’s ‘Women & Power’ was key to the development of the poem, especially Beard’s description of author, Henry James’ criticism of the female voice, which he described as ‘a mumble or jumble, a tongue-less slobber’. The Belfast-based musician, performer and composer DIE HEXEN (Dianne Lucille Campbell) was commissioned to create a brittle and tense soundtrack that builds to a crescendo, only to be prematurely silenced. DIE HEXEN uses only upper case for her stage name, which translates from the German to ‘The Witches’. Brown contacted and engaged all-female film production and post-production teams who facilitated and articulated Browns’ exploration of the questions, aims and objectives set out in the enquiry. The formation of all-female teams also acted as a direct questioning of the contemporary understanding of the sexist behaviour apparent in the international film industry, particularly in light of the ‘Me Too’ movement. Brown was interviewed by local media to call-out for participants. These included an appearance on the Paulette Edwards show on BBC Radio Sheffield, an article in the Sheffield Telegraph newspaper by Richard Blackledge, and an interview with Adrian Sinclair on Chapel FM, a community radio station in Leeds. Brown also made individual contact with a diverse range of activists, charities, organisations and individuals who contributed politically to the city and to the representation of the city as defined in the research questions. Subsequently over 600 women signed up via the Eventbrite event site, with over 200 participating on the day of filming. Filming took place in Paradise Square on September 2nd 2018. The participants performed a number of ‘Soft Rebellions’ - the methodology that arose out of Brown’s research in Detroit that describes a series of rebellious, transgressive, artistic actions employed in response to the context of the location. Each Soft Rebellion was designed as a call to action and empowerment by ‘The Unquiets’ – the name given to the participants in Monk’s poem. The participants were directed to perform the following: • ‘The Wigan Clap’ – a specific form of applause developed by Northern Soul audiences at Wigan Casino in the 1970s (also known as ‘The Unity Clap’). • ‘The Incantation’ - delivered by Geraldine Monk. • ‘The Chant’. • ‘The Song’ – delivered by four members of experimental choir ‘Juxtavoices’. • ‘The Silence’ in reference to the Chartist silent protests. • ‘The Yell’. Post-production took place from September 2018 to February 2019. Editing was by Lia Hayes with all other post-production undertaken by a team of women at Manchester-based Company FLIX. World premiere: The film was installed in Paradise Square on a large outdoor screen as part of the international film festival DocFest. This world premiere was screened from midday to 9pm on Saturday 8th June 2019 and was seen by an audience of 1298. Further screenings include •Off The Shelf Festival, Sheffield, screening plus Q&A with Chloë Brown and Geraldine Monk, October 2019 •The Front, New Orleans, USA, screening plus Q&A with Chloë Brown November 2019 •Plus: School of the Art Institute of Chicago, USA, screening plus presentation by Chloë Brown, December 2019 (online) •Centre for Poetry and Poetics & Creative Writing, University of Sheffield, screening plus Q&A with Chloë Brown (pictured) and Geraldine Monk, February 2020 •Spit it Out Festival, HOME, Manchester, February 2020 •No Bounds Festival: T.V. broadcast of ‘Memory Dance’- an archive of historical and contemporary short films from Sheffield and South Yorkshire, in collaboration with Sheffield Live T.V., October 2020.