Gut Feelings Meri JaanUP Projects and Touchstones Rochdale2021
Gut Feelings Meri Jaan is a series of filmed performative acts made with Rochdale residents, responding to the 'Ethnic Minorities' section of the local history archives held at Touchstones Museum and Art Gallery. Together they asked: what do we find when we go looking for ourselves in the archive? How can we alter the course of history through a new script?
Performed at local sites bound up in histories of Empire and post-war migration from former colonies, members of the resulting diasporas read then eat the contents of an archive, wash the statue of an industrialist with handfuls of yoghurt and walk endlessly in the bucolic Lancashire landscape. This collaborative piece of work culminated in a book and a series of films which meddle with traditional archival approaches. What would be gazed at or read becomes digested or buried bringing the past, present and future of the archive and the power it holds under new scrutiny.
