Prejudice & Pride: Nothing but a Common Whore

Rachael Milliner

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2022-23

My practice explores how to dismantle the patriarchal system that enclosed land. Understanding it through system thinking – it sits within an interconnected struggle against a patriarchal, racist, anti-migrant, heteronormative, transphobic and ableist system that uses the same power structures that enclosed the English common to continue perpetuating harm within England and globally. Land ownership is inherently a patriarchal act. Passed from God to King, King to Lord, Father to son. Tracing the parallel history of the feminine ideal and the English pastoral the myth of Englishness is deconstructed through popular culture, literature and music to reveal the people and stories that muddy these images. The witches, the whores and the commoners. A feminist methodology is proposed to explore reclaiming access to land and its surrounding knowledge systems. Firstly, breaking down power dynamics attached to different ways of knowing. Nothing can ever be truly objective, and in fact, there is great power in subjectivity. My practice draws on my own embodied knowledge to ground these huge interconnected systems. Secondly, storytelling as method. Story telling provides space for the interweaving of many voices and knowledges. I am using it to challenge dominant narratives that simplify non normative experiences. Thirdly grassroot activism rooted in queer futurity and an abolitionist future. Dreaming of utopia is often useful but the revolution is not a future act. It is how we treat one another now in our daily actions. In a speculative world where land access is common an infrastructure of access is built in which multiplicities of stories can unfold. Exploring how, in the context of Wistmans Wood Dartmoor, can building resilience in temperate rainforests also facilitate knowledge communing through a feminist infrastructure of citizen science, education and care.

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