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Paper short abstract

Uncanny Waters is an intergenerational, LGBTQ+ arts project, exploring folklore, ancestry and migration through costume, writing and performance. Inspired by the 'Necker', a South London river hag, the project queers myth as living heritage resisting patriarchal, colonial and transphobic erasure.

Paper long abstract

A short film and paper that documents Heads Bodies Legs intergenerational, LGBTQ+ community arts and heritage project Uncanny Waters.

The film (Winner of Best LGBTQ+ Filmmaker Big Syn UN Sustainable Development Goals) documents the exhibition of a 6-month community project which asked participants: ‘What stories did you inherit?’ Through costume and performance, we explored cultural and personal memory and participants created work which explored narratives of migration, ancestry and transformation. The project also took inspiration from Deptford’s ‘necker’, a folkloric river Hag.

Accessibility and inclusion are not only a principle but also a generative practise. Early project activities, mudlarking and low-tide walks, proved inaccessible for some. Alongside the live performances, exhibition and film, we created a digital gallery of photographs with poetic audio descriptions. The description texts were created by partially-blind poet Joseph Rizzo Naudi and queer poet Annie Hayter. Their process involved interviews and tactile exploration of the participants costumes, recording the experience and passing the material to a poet who worked ‘blind’ to generate evocative responses. This process revealed uncanny layers of meaning, giving voice to the hidden inspirations and idiosyncrasies in the work.

Our contribution to the ISFNR will be to provide a practise-based perspective, showing how by basing mythic tales in participatory arts practise, folklore can become a living tangible heritage, which opens possibilities of queer, feminist and decolonial ways of reimagining our relationship with water, memory and belonging.