Photo of Jo Bannon by Paul Samuel White.
Jo Bannon – We Are Fucked
We Are Fucked is a new performance work by artist Jo Bannon exploring desire, sexuality and neoliberalism. It interrogates the modern feminist experience of personal, psychological and political penetration.
We Are Fucked is a melodramatic opera, an ode to hard work.
Soft flesh contends with hard metal as vibrating bodies and hysterical voices attempt to unseat the hidden interior of anxiety, daily exertion and relentless penetration.
We see three women as fucking objects. In a relentless game of in and out, up and down, push and pull, stuttering arias, they are constructing a power house. They are women, winning.
As they vibrate, our gaze on them is shaken, each time we look, what we’re seeing shifts. The room quakes with the force of these vibrations until we imagine they might just be strong enough to topple patriarchy from its precarious perch. It is both ecstatic and excruciating, euphoric and unforgiving.
Jo Bannon is a UK artist making live art and performance. She has presented work in the UK, Europe, South America and Australia including the Barbican, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Arnolfini, Itau Cultural Brazil, Battersea Arts Centre, PAD Mainz and the National Theatre. She is a founder member of artist collective Residence.
RUNNING TIME 60mins
AGE RECOMMENDATION 16+
“Doubt and disturbance come to a climax in Jo Bannon’s powerfully penetrating performance… We Are Fucked probes the question with an unobtrusive yet powerful female energy often overlooked in our society. ‘This is what’s happening,’ she seems to say. ‘Are you okay with that?”
– Anna Kaszuba, Springback Magazine“I can’t decipher if it’s the sound of a neighbour’s lovemaking – headboard gently knocking on the wall – or some mounting fury that might culminate in a public uprising.Either way, the sense of voyeurism or discomfort cuts unassumingly yet painfully in Jo Bannon’s We are Fucked”
– Maddy Costa, Exeunt“…how blown away I was by We Are Fucked. It has kept returning to me – visually, aurally, through its audacity and humour and sheer visual precision. It was a very exciting thing to witness.”
– Clare Doherty, Director of Arnolfini
