(Source: itisatourcenter)
(Source: itisatourcenter)
American social activist Dorothy Height (born 1912) was an advocate of women’s rights and civil rights. She shared the platform with the Martin Luther King Jr. when he delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963. The recipient of more than 50 awards from local, state, and national organizations, Height received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, in 1994.
Slip of the Tongue
Dressed in a flesh-coloured body stocking and long blonde wig, Sinead King shouts into a loud-hailer at Oxford Circus: “Anyone want a new hymen?” Her colleague, Katie O’Brien, pretends to inject her face with a giant syringe labelled “Botox”. Every few minutes the pair down tools, belt up their red and white trenchcoats, put their hands in their pockets and “flash” passers-by, revealing curly merkins (pubic wigs). Onlookers laugh – and stare. Welcome to the world of the Muffia.
King, 28, and O’Brien, 27, met at a performance art workshop in Glasgow a year ago and started doing impromptu monthly street performances in Manchester and London last summer. Both have backgrounds in the arts: O’Brien did a fine art degree and works as a theatre administrator; King studied performing arts and has worked as a gender studies lecturer. But they specifically wanted to make a political statement. “We realised we were both quite radical,” says King, “and that we didn’t really want to define ourselves as artists. I felt that a lot of art lacks a political message. People were not asking the questions I wanted them to.”
“I guess what everyone wants more than anything else is to be loved. And to know that you loved me for my singing is too much for me. Forgive me if I don’t have all the words. Maybe I can sing it and you’ll understand.”- Ella Fitzgerald
