Bodies of Knowledge
Three commissions using performance workshops and experimental documentary to explore the body as a site for the production and retention of knowledge. Read more
Raju Rage worked with Isaac Scott Briggs and Nat Thorne of Notts Trans Hub to run a series of workshops exploring the reproduction of transgender bodies through photography. These explored explored how, while social media can provide trans people with a platform through which they can shape visual narratives around their bodies, it also can give rise to new norms regarding how trans people should look, feel and act. Wanting to escape the cis gaze and accumulative circuits of social media, workshop participants instead used analog black and white photography to represent their worlds. Largely resisting photographs of the human body, they produced a powerful body of work which subverts cis expectations of what it means to be trans. Many of these images featured in the Bodies of Knowledge exhibition at Attenborough Arts Centre in autumn 2019, with later photographs shown in What Makes This Image Trans? in Loughborough's Martin Hall gallery in the spring of 2021.
A photographic essay featuring works produced features in Bodies of Knowledge, published by Radar and the Live Art Development Agency, alongside a conversation exploring issues raised between Rage, Briggs, Thorne and Jennifer Cooke, Reader in English at Loughborough University.
Raju Rage is an interdisciplinary artist who is proactive about using art, education and activism to forge creative survival. Based in London and working beyond, they primarily use their non-conforming body as a vehicle of embodied knowledge; to bridge the gap between dis/connected bodies, theory and practice, text and the body and aesthetics and the political substance. They work in performance, sculpture, soundscapes and moving image, focusing on techniques of resistance and utilising everyday objects and everyday life experiences in communicating narratives around gender, race and culture. They investigate history, memory and trauma, with an emphasis on colonial legacy, its continuation and impact on the body and contemporary diasporan identity. They are an organiser and member of Collective Creativity arts collective and a creative educator with an interest in radical pedagogy.
Radar is grateful for the continued support of Notts Trans Hub, a community organisation and information service based in Nottingham. It functions as a hub for organisation and information about trans-friendly organisations and events, and campaigns locally for safer spaces for trans people.
Three commissions using performance workshops and experimental documentary to explore the body as a site for the production and retention of knowledge. Read more
Wed 18 May 2022
09:30am - 12:30pm
A screening and discussion panel exploring filmic and photographic representation of trans lives. Read more
Mon 24 May 2021
12:00pm - 14:00pm
An exhibition of works by trans photographers exploring the reflection and construction of lived experience. Read more
Sat 6 March 2021
17:00pm - 19:00pm
A series of three workshops exploring the reproduction of transgender bodies through photography. Open to transgender participants from the East Midlands. Read more
Fri 25 October 2019
00:00am - 00:00am
Radar presents ongoing work exploring the body as a site for the production of knowledge. Read more