At 5pm on Monday 20 January a group of 30 or so people gathered outside Newcastle Civic Centre, standing in a circle under the echo chamber dome to perform a tonal reading of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This event was organised as an ‘act of resistance’ to coincide with the inauguration of Donald Trump as the 47th President of the United States of America, at a moment in history when our hard-won rights are under attack around the globe and international human rights norms are being trashed by authoritarian leaders.
The Newcastle event was led by Noize Choir, and built on a series of performances by the late feminist and artivist Monica Ross, entitled An Act of Memory. Monica’s original performance series took place over four and a half years from 2008 to 2013, beginning in the British Library and ending at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. Three of the 60 readings took place in the North East of England: at Baltic, Gateshead, as part of the much-missed Wunderbar Festival, at the Globe Gallery in Tynemouth, and at Woodhorn Museum in Northumberland.
Noize Choir organised a similar performance in Newcastle on 10 December 2024, International Human Rights Day, encouraging participants to memorise an Article that was meaningful to them, and to speak in their mother-tongue if they wished. At this week’s event we heard Articles being intoned in Polish, Portuguese and Gujarati as well as English. After speaking each participant held a lighted candle and when everyone had spoken and all the Articles had been voiced people moved about the space continuing to intone words and phrases in a beautiful melange of sounds. As we face an uncertain future with Trump already pulling out of COP and the WHO, these small acts of resistance will become increasingly important in order to bolster hope and resilience.
It did not go unremarked that 20 January was also Martin Luther King Day, honouring a true leader whose life was the antithesis of Donald Trump with his money-grabbing deals and climate-change denial, not to mention his sexist, homophobic, anti-migration and hate-filled rhetoric. It’s going to be a long four years but we need to lay the ground for resistance now.
NB: Anniversary – An Act of Memory was developed by Monica from a solo performance in response to the fatal shooting of Jean Charles De Menezes by police in London on 22 July 22n2005.
You can find out more about Noize Choir here An Act of Resistance – reading the declaration of human rights
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