A collective response: Feminism, film, performance and Greenham Common

Abstract

Abstract This article examines the part played by four film and video artists as chroniclers as well as participants in the civic struggle against nuclear weapons, providing alternative documents of the women’s camp at Greenham Common to those of the official media record. For, as the article will discuss, the model of protest at Greenham was uniquely indebted to, and characterised by, the models of non-violent resistance developed through post-war feminism. As part of this, a strategy of creative resistance had an important role to play: through song and poems, through banners, paintings and drawings; by amateur and professional artists. However, the film and video documents of Greenham Common by Tina Keane, Joanna Davis and Lis Rhodes, and Annabel Nicolson, on which this article will focus, are not concerned solely with advocacy for anti-nuclear and political protest, but rather, Greenham proved inspirational for them on an individual basis, enabling them to meaningfully explore how feminist principles might be folded into their experimental practices.