Are you a fan of Heavens to Betsy or riot grrrl? Artist Katie Hare has put together a sound and video installation based on the seminal band’s 1993 album Calculated, to appear in London on 14-16 October. Cazz Blase reports
Young people’s political awakening has swarmed up as a major issue of public debate once again. First there was the return of mass a student protest movement, as young people mobilised against the budget cuts. And then the riots this summer in English cities prompted a mass debate about youth as depoliticised and disenfranchised.
Among all this discussion music has come up repeatedly; whether that’s NME lamenting the lack of a soundtrack to the student protests or political pundits blaming rap music for the riots.
So it seems an apt time for artists to consider that shattering moment in a young person’s life of political awakening. But to do so, artist Katie Hare in a multimedia installation in The Old Police Station in London, will return to a key moment in young women’s activist history, 1993, to consider Heavens to Betsy’s album Calculated, which takes as its subject Corin Tucker’s own ‘click’ moment of politicisation.