“Protest Geometry” is made up of signs, shapes, songs, and gestures that address our desire for empowerment and the balance between intention and investment, expectation and result. Using as its starting point the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp Songbook, the performance addresses the romantic notions of protest and heroism and attempts to separate these notions from specific causes, instead focusing on their absence. The participants go through the motions, expected and appropriate-call and response, marching, and posturing. But their delivery is muffled by lack of weight and intensity: no cause to fight for, ground to cover, or suitable use for a clenched fist. Rather than apathy, this disconnect is the result of the gap between revolutionary desire and mundane day-to-day existence; the disconnected body is then the perfect vehicle for a message that is already written. The borrowed causes from the songbook and the mythology of the protest movement supplant the truly personal and resonant beliefs of each participant, which remain inarticulate.

This performance was curated by Cleopatra’s as part of the FLOAT series at Socrates Sculpture Park.