HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MARSHA!: ADRIENNE MAREE BROWN, BLACK OBSIDIAN SOUND SYSTEM, TOURMALINE & LOLA OLUFEMI

A celebration of Marsha P. Johnson's birthday with a screening, performance and readings by adrienne maree brown, Evan Ifekoya of Black Obsidian Sound System and Tourmaline, with Lola Olufemi in the chair. Abolition is the work of care. Care is the fabric of the abolitionist promise of freedom: freedom from the carceral, and capitalist state grammar of ‘liberty’ and ‘justice’. The abolitionist dream is one of new intimacies, speculation and healing. On the birthday of Marsha P. Johnson, this event brings together several elements that celebrate the radical care and kinship characteristic of the Trans revolutionary. A screening of Happy Birthday, Marsha!, a speculative short film about Johnson's life in the hours before she ignited the Stonewall Riots by Tourmaline and Sasha Wortzel is followed by a performance by Black Obsidian Sound System, a QTIPOC-led soundsystem, and a reading by organiser and writer adrienne maree brown. To close the ‘Revolution is not a one-time event’ programme, a discussion with adrienne maree brown, members of B.O.S.S and Tourmaline, chaired by Lola Olufemi, explores militant revolutionary love and queer and trans desire as central to abolition. What is the radical potential of care and community? What new forms of kinship can we build that finally lay the nuclear family and state control of communities to rest? New forms of life begin in speculative gestures: how can performance and artistic practice help us anticipate and craft what we seek to build? Revolution is not a one-time is a programme organised by Che Gossett, Lola Olufemi and Sarah Shin in collaboration with Arika and hosted by Silver Press.