Ren Loren Britton

Coalition Constellation

Coalition Constellation is a project that draws constellations in a new film work in order to tell stories about affirmative collaborative social justice practices over time. In this work, constellations trace connections between social justice issues and the planetary scale, participating in a trans*feminist tradition of re-naming structures towards stories, names and experiences that reference our thriving. Rights-based stories told in this work speak about coalitions between disabled, trans*, racialized and other oppressed groups. How different would collective imaginaries be if we looked up and saw not Orion’s Belt, but rather the Reparations constellation?

This research counteracts the negativity in our social present and moves towards a ‘we’, as Femke Snelting calls it, which is complex and maintains a multiplicity of goals, practices, collectives and oppositions, while still achieving political change. By making a collection of when things have gone well for and between oppressed groups, especially when prior circumstances have been grave, research in this project will develop collaborative storytelling practices intended to fire up our collective political imaginaries.

While addressing stories of coalitions that have worked together to fight for something specific, Coalition Constellation focuses on case studies that attune to the mixture of contingent and possible moments when things have gone right between distinct political organizations.

Text: Ren Loren Britton