ART-BASED RESEARCH PROJECT

The aim of the art-based part of the SoD project was to explore the ways in which Britain-based people think and feel about Brexit via artistic means. To that end, I organized and conducted 4 creative workshops in Liverpool over the course of 2023 and 2024 for 15 individuals who agreed to participate in them. The participants were asked to fill out the questionnaire which guided them in how to ponder the visuals, sounds, and verbal utterances they associate with Brexit. The collected inputs ultimately fell into one of two main categories, in accordance with the type of activity performed by the workshop participants; namely: original material (e.g., the participants’ self-made visual creations, sonic effects, and verbal statements) and ready-made material (e.g., the participants’ selection of already existing images, sounds/songs, and verbal expressions). Irrespective of origin, the participants’ inputs were all analyzed, categorized, and eventually put into a coherent poetic audiovisual narrative (song & video) on the basis of their thematic recurrences and prevailing sentiments. The choice of the overall stylistic framework for both the song and the video “Brexit Shitshow” (including a number of featured images) was, however, made by the researcher-author herself.

Brexit Shitshow

The “Brexit Shitshow” Poster

SoD made possible scholarly and intersectoral collaborations across Europe through a practice-based research symposium on music and politics (titled “Sounds of Dissent” after the project’s name) that I organized in Dublin in the spring 2024. Owing to the artistic and activist orientation of the symposium, I was able to incorporate in it an exhibition that featured the symposium participants’ practice-based work. The exhibition took place on the ground floor of DCU Cregan Library, St. Patrick’s Campus, from 21 March 2024, when it was officially launched, until the end of the symposium on 12 April 2024. Throughout the entire duration of exhibition, all library users were able to engage with the displayed artworks, including my own art-based research project on Brexit. On that occasion, the “Brexit Shitshow” poster was exhibited together with the song’s audio sample which was run on a loop.

The “Brexit Shitshow” Video - Chapter 1

The “Brexit Shitshow” song and music video was premiered at Seamus Heaney Lecture Theatre (G114), DCU Cregan Library, St. Patrick’s Campus, on the second day of the “Sounds of Dissent” symposium (12 April 2024).

To see the “Brexit Shitshow” song and music video in their entirety, go the SoD project’s YouTube channel.

To see the “Brexit Shitshow” lyrics, click here.

Documenting the creative workshops on Brexit

Liverpool, 30.04.2023

In total, four creative workshops on Brexit were held, all of them in Liverpool. (The other two took place on the 8th and 9th of February 2024.)

I was able to recruit a sufficiently diverse sample of research participants (racially, ethnically, socioeconomically and sexually), albeit homogeneous in their anti-Brexit stance.