Soft Target: First Stop - UK

For two weeks, I appeared with my target at various soft targets in the UK, first in Lincoln and then London. From Lincoln Cathedral to London Eye and the Palace of Westminster, from Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall to Hyde Park, the River Thames, the “Soft Target” performances speak in silence during which the target sign frees me to speak precisely by falling silent. These performances simultaneously addresses fixed and shifting authority, investigate the current nature of power, stereotyping, and the politics of freedom of speech, questioning the current desire and rhetoric for agreement and consensus in a pluralist society. Presenting the target, which is misinterpreted (or in some cases elicit an ongoing ‘truth’) as a threat to the sites it appears in, highlights the fact that misinterpretation obscures the clear implication that I, myself (brown skinned male - read Muslim Southeast and Arab male) am an easy target. Begun in 2011, this shifting interpretation, misinterpretation of meaning from a site first to an individual, and then to a collective, is the essence of the “Soft Target” one-minute performances.