Drifting Right is a one-on-one in a canoe for an audience member who is also a right-wing voter.
The piece seeks to engender a cross-political dialogue between my left leaning tendencies, and those who support the rightwards shift currently happening in Western politics. It is a piece about talking to conservatives, and sharing a boat with a conservative. This piece premiered from May 7th to 10th at the Next Wave Festival in Melbourne Australia. On May 11th we held one of Next Wave’s trademark Breakfast Club events about the project. This was a town hall style meeting curated by Next Wave, where I presented the “results” of my research, and we featured some of my conservative canoeing co-pilots. The event opened up the discussion with an audience about left vs. right and the tenuous possibility for dialogue.
In February of 2015, I conducted the same project with right-wing voters at the (Im)Possible Futures Festival at Vooruit in Ghent.
You can listen to a presentation on the project here.
If you’re curious to know more, I wrote this blog post for the Guardian about the project. You can also contact me directly through the “Contact Me” page if you wish to view documentation of the project.
Deborah Pearson 