“As a Soft Radical, my struggle to stay soft in hard times begins in the body and my process is dedicated to first becoming, and staying soft,” Goldendean. 

A decade after starting their research for their book Plan B: A Gathering of Strangers (or) This is not Working, Goldendean begins a residency in Utrecht to reflect on what the soft radical, hypervisible, queer body brings to, and in movement, for social change-making. Goldendean invites local artists, living and working in Utrecht into conversation with their practice to find common ground in the making of a new work: Stay Soft in Hard Times. And invites you to prepare a “soft place for hard questions” where a praxis, communal care and socially engaged education and dialogue can be enacted in solidarity with all oppressed bodies and identities, through workshops and active installations.

This residency becomes a site specific container for an evolving series of practice-as-research live performances that began in 2015 in Johannesburg. The work is an extension of a series of improvisations of bodies moving in space together – an act of live performance art that is unique in how it responds to the political and geographic space in which it takes place, an intimate conversation with collaborators, and an audience, to shift expectations of how we can exist with, or in spite of each other. 

Through this process Goldendean realises that it isn’t enough to simply present objects in a place but it is necessary to engage intimately to shift the space for all who occupy it. 

Through our enactment of provocative, and playful gestures, we encourage all bodies in a space to disrupt conventional codes of behaviour – creating spaces of liberation and possibility – as (unwanted) soft bodies living under increased control, criminalisation, and restriction of our bodies, presentation, and performance of gender globally. 

In Cruising Utopia, José Esteban Muñoz emphasises the ephemeral nature of “utopian performances” (Muñoz, 2009) noting that they often leave behind traces that inspire hope and possibility. These “evidences” serve as reminders of the potential for alternative futures, even in the face of systemic oppression. 

As soft radicals, dissent queer bodies are asked to hold complexity and to be simple. To be soft without collapsing, to be strong without hardening. To care for, and to be careful with others. To invite encounters between playful bodies that are complicated and loving; tender and questioning; visible and vulnerable. To be both loving and difficult – to refuse legibility and belonging that demands that we sacrifice ourselves for connection. Embodied performance can be a place where resistant queer and trans fat bodies inhabit and take space – encouraging responding moments of soft courage to evoke” tender feelings” to shift observers to participation where our bodies can be safer together.

Want to join their project? Check the Open Call! 

photo Brian Hartley