CCA Project Space: 'Your Silence Will Not Protect You'

CCA Derry~Londonderry's Project Space is occupied by Your Silence Will Not Protect You by Sue Morris and Greg McLaughlin, as part of the exhibition From Bloody Sunday to Brexit group exhibition happening across the city. You can see this installation and listen to the audio through our windows at 10–12 Artillery Street until Monday 20 June 2022.

This work moves between art space and street and explores personal, collective and political responses to traumatic events. At CCA the viewer is presented with a room that's constructed as a typical domestic space, but one regularly used as a campaign base. A soundscape of recordings taken on Bloody Sunday and at numerous other protests plays alongside a montage of moving images in a loop out onto Artillery Street. The images, texts and sounds suggest how the mass media infiltrate our daily lives. The work acknowledges the courage and tenacity of those seeking justice globally, and who refuse to remain silent, even in the face of state and institutional obstruction and brutality. The scene also speaks to the voyeurism and surveillance that private campaigners so often experience.

Alongside this work, a billboard is mounted at Free Derry corner that features a photograph taken on Bloody Sunday (1972) at the march, overlaid with a quote from Black American political activist Audre Lorde: ‘Your silence will not protect you’.

The work is part of a wider arts event called From Bloody Sunday to Brexit, and has been commissioned and funded by the Bloody Sunday Trust and ArtsEverywhere. It runs alongside the international Sites of Conscience conference being held at The Playhouse.