Join us for the screening of Marlon Riggs’ 1989 documentary Tongues Untied, followed by an experimental collective reading from Collective Çukurcuma, as part of the Repeated Apparitions programme curated by the Care-fuffle Collective.
Doors: 7pm
Tickets available on a sliding scale £4.50 - £10
We're delighted to present this screening of Tongues Untied as the third of four events taking place at The Horse Hospital as part of the Repeated Apparitions programme curated by The Care-fuffle Collective. Through a shared exploration of radical images, wild experimental sounds and evocative texts, the programme looks at how repetition can be used to create processes of reparation and renewal, disrupt the past and imagine new realities.
The presented screening is captioned and the event is BSL interpreted by Sign For All.
Tongues Untied, dir. Marlon Riggs
55’, US, 1989
This radical landmark work of Black Queer Cinema, in the words the Emmy Award-winner Marlon Riggs’ himself, was made to “shatter this nation’s [America’s] brutalising silence on matters of sexual and racial difference”. Sparking huge controversy in the culture wars of the 1980s, this vital experimental documentary uses poetry, personal testimony, rap and performance featuring Essex Hemphill amongst others, to depict the specificity of black gay identity. Through fierce directness and affirmations, Riggs explores what it means to live as an outsider in both a Black community and a largely white gay subculture.
The screening will be presented with an experimental collective reading session moderated by Collective Çukurcuma.
Collective Çukurcuma Reading Group is a platform that foregoes institutional hierarchies in favour of a horizontal learning environment where the resources are shared and repurposed to create a more equal and accessible space for knowledge production. Collective Çukurcuma Reading Group was initiated in 2015 by Naz Cuguoğlu & Mine Kaplangı. The two founding members were joined by Gökcan Demirkazık and Hakkı Serhat Cacekli in 2016. In addition to facilitating semester-long thematic discussion sessions on such subjects as hauntology and archive-based artistic practices from SWANA, the reading group has been invited to organise meetings in conjunction with various exhibitions in Istanbul and abroad, most notably as part of the public programme of the 15th Istanbul Biennial (2017); 4th Istanbul Design Biennial (2018); Basis Frankfurt (2020); and the Asian Art Museum’s After Hope Program (2020).