Escape Velocity Walks the City: Kindness and intimacy in public space in the transgender and gender diverse teen experience

Abstract

Escape Velocity Walks the City took place 23rd-26th October 2019 as part of the Future Echoes Festival in Melbourne, Australia. Created by Rosana Cade with Ivor MacAskill, Laurie Brown and St Martins Youth Theatre, audience and performer walk and talk together through the inner city of Melbourne. Walking and sitting, hand in hand with transgender and gender non-conforming teens, the performance was often silent, uneasy and yet, kind. Simultaneously fragile and powerful the work provoked a gentle expectation to open our hearts and minds. From the surreal zone of isolation (mid COVID-19 pandemic) this paper is a memory of a performance that was made up of intimacy and empathy. Drawing on Donna Harraway’s (2015) notion of “making kin” as acts of kindness, this paper explores how necessary intimacy in public space is – especially once we emerge from the pandemic – to make a future that is kinder, resilient, and just.