Work on Progress

This is how you are going to do it. Look straight ahead. You’re going… Shit ok, start again. This is how you are going to do it. Don’t look back. You’re going to pull out a fresh sheet of paper, lay it on the table. Then pick up a pen. You’re going to draw.. No, again. This is how you are going to do it. You’re going to pick up a pen. You’re going to make a list of things to remember. Important rules, important dates, important names, stuff like that… Perfect. Now close your eyes.

A response to a call-out for manifestos for a queer future, Work on Progress is a 13 minute performance co-authored by Olympia Bukkakis and Isabel Gatzke. Incorporating text from various manifestos throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the work weaves citations of other voices into original text to articulate a way of moving into the future without forgetting lessons learned from the past. Adopting features of the political manifesto while also dragging its conventions to call into question the masculine and totalising features of this form, Work on Progress features animation by Camille Lacadee and costume by Jay Barry Matthews and was performed as part of The Present is Not Enough Festival at Hebbel am Ufer (HAU) in Berlin.