there's nothing
you can do but keep running
XYX LAB
Credit: Brett Brown
Responding to ACCA’s provocation Who’s Afraid of Public Space? Keep Running was a series of dynamic graphic interventions across the streets of greater Melbourne. Through posters and billboards, Monash University XYX Lab invites communities to consider gendered spatial inequity in our city.
This underpass is the most efficient way to get from the tram stop to the street, however, it’s dark, has lots of menacing graffiti and is long and invisible to the street. If someone follows you in there, there’s nothing you can do but keep running. — Female, LGBTIQ+, Walking, After Dark, Union Street, Armadale
Extending Monash University XYX Lab’s ongoing local and international applied research, Keep Running draws attention to the experiences of women and gender-diverse communities by presenting data and intersectional narratives of gender that affect how public spaces are accessed and occupied.
Through a series of poster and billboard interventions on the streets of greater Melbourne, Keep Running provokes important dialogue around women and gender-diverse people’s right to access public space, and the conditions that cultivate fear and risk. Dynamic graphic representations of statistics concerning the realities of urban [un]safety are augmented by powerful statements that capture everyday experiences of navigating public spaces that are shaped by (hetero)sexism.
In this way the surfaces and sites of the city are activated to amplify the voices and experiences of a diverse range of people who are not often heard.
Keep Running is a call to action for communities to develop an understanding of safety and risk in our city and an opportunity for audiences to consider their own lived experience and/or to develop understanding and empathy.
