As a live artist and cultural worker I like to collaborate. Some associates are regular collaborators, some work intensively on a particular project, others are one-offs, part of my network.
Some comrades crop up again and again, like Kay Hyatt and Simon Murphy/Mona Compleine of Good Fuzzy Sounds. Here we are photographed by Holly Revell for the Pride Inside project in 2020. The image appeared on digital billboards around the country.
Here’s a list of people and places I adore and have been lucky to work with.
Jason Barker
Before The Lesbian and Gay Community and The Fat of the Land, I appeared in Jason’s award-winning film St Pelagius the Penitent (1998) and collaborated more substantially in Subterranean Homesick Blues (2000), a short film about gender, queerness, being young and English villages.
Bildwechsel
Since 2009 Bildwechsel have provided an archival home to much of my work, including the original Queer and Trans Fat Activist Timeline. I have also contributed work to their projects in print and on film. In 2013 I participated in How Do You Do? Global Queer Notes, in which international activists submitted a video postcard. These were screened at the Lesbisch Schwule Filmtage Hamburg/International Queer Film Festival, which has also supported my work, and at Bildwechsel Glasgow.
Liz Carr
Liz and I co-convened QUILTBAGG, a queer crip gathering, 2013-2016. Part hangout, part networking event, part show and tell, each QUILTBAGG had a theme (fabulous, smelly, outer space, and so on), an activity and a costume.
Seke Chimutengwende
Alongside Season Butler, Justin Hunt, Harold Offeh and Efrosini, I improvised a video interview about rock stardom, identity, disintegration and performance for Seke’s show Plastic Soul, which had its premier at The Yard on 30 January 2019.
Jayne County
In the mid-80s I was extremely fortunate to be a dancer in the legendary queer trans punk performer’s show at the Hippodrome in London. I wrote about this formative experience in Cooper, C. (2006) ‘I was a teenaged go-go girl’, in Stevens, A. (ed.), The Edgier Waters: new writing from literary upstarts. London: Snow Books.
Fat Performance Network
This international and interdisciplinary group centres, develops and explores fat people and performance. It emerged from a series of gatherings in 2020 convened by Gillie Kleiman under the auspices of the Live Art Development Agency. A zine was collectively produced, you can download it here: https://issuu.com/ternuracyborg/docs/fatperformanceworkbook
Emma Hedditch
In 2002 I wrote a text about joining in for Emma’s web project, and i will do. In 2003 I made a verbatim performance video for a show called I wish that everything was better between us, which screened at the ICA on 22 March.
Dick Jewell
I appear a few times in Dick Jewell’s film ‘Descending a Staircase’ filmed at Kinky Gerlinky in October 1993 and shown at the blockbuster The Horror Show! at Somerset House in London, 2022-3.
Miranda July
In 1996 I participated in the Big Miss Moviola event recorded at Artists Television Access, part of the Dirty Bird queercore festival in San Francisco. Read my account. In 2017 The Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles acquired Miranda’s Joanie 4 Jackie archive, my video is part of that collection and was also shown at the Brooklyn Museum’s zines exhibition which ran 2023-2024.
Zinzi Minott
In 2015 I collaborated with Zinzi on 30 Skanks (And Other Revolutionary Dances), a piece engaged with dance as protest, anti-racism and impact of the carceral state on Black people. It was performed at Chisenhale Dance Space on 4 December.
Jet Moon
I performed at Come Together: An Extravaganza of Resistance, part of Jet’s Resiliant and Resisting project, supported by Heritage Lottery Fund and Arcola Theatre on 14 April 2019. The work was based on oral histories, collaborative stories, and DIY research with people at the intersection of several kinds of marginalisation.
Project O
In 2014 I began a life-changing long-term choreographic relationship with Project O (Alexandrina Hemsley and Jamila Johnson-Small), after seeing them perform their show, O. This developed into a performance called SWAGGA and a film, which screened at the British Film Institute. The New Empowering School was a ten-week series of free workshops in 2015 that was part of the creative process for developing SWAGGA. The project was supported by Arts Council England, Cambridge Junction, Live Art Development Agency, ArtsAdmin, Dance Research Studio, South-East Dance and The Yard. Katarzyna Perlak worked closely on the project as photographer, and created a film of the piece.
I blogged about SWAGGA at Obesity Timebomb and published an article about it with Open Democracy.Cooper, C. (2015) ‘I am a fat dancer, but I am not your inspiration porn’, Transformation [online], available: https://web.archive.org/web/20150321203433/https://www.opendemocracy.net/transformation/charlotte-cooper/i-am-fat-dancer-but-i-am-not-your-inspiration-porn
McGuinness, C. M. (2018). Performing Solidarity: Affirmation, Difference and Debility in Project O’s SWAGGA, Contemporary Theatre Review, 28:3, 367-377
Monica Ross
In 2010 I participated in Monica Ross’ An Act of Memory for International Women’s Week at Stratford Circus. This was the 21st iteration of this monumental project. Anniversary — an act of memory: Act 21, Monica Ross and Co-Recitors
Scottee
I have consulted and written for, performed in and been a part of Scottee’s performance work since the 2010s. This includes Hamburger Queen, The Worst of Scottee, Scottee: I Made It, Fat Blokes, Self Help and more. There are links to some of this work in Therapy Culture.
Coral Short and Angela Gabereau
My video for Queer Prophesies: Future Visioning debuted at the 2014 National Queer Arts Festival in San Francisco. The project is commissioned by the Queer Cultural Center, Endeavor for the Arts, and The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.
Theatre Royal Stratford East
In 2013 Jonny Leigh Wright, aka XYM, wrote E15, a play in response to a conversation with me. This was directed by Rikki Beadle-Blair. Jonny performed it as a solo show in my home, which Holly Medhurst filmed.
Greg Wohead
In 2018 I performed in Celebration, Florida at the Soho Theatre in London. The piece uses surrogates and verbatim techniques to explore themes of aloneness, technology and artifice.
Women Working Class
I am one of the group assembled by Fox Irving in 2020, and supported by Arts Council England, to work on class and gender. Find out more: WomenWorkingClass.com
Conversations
Blunderfield, M. (2018) Episode 3: Charlotte Cooper [online]. Scaffold. UK. Available: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/ep-3-charlotte-cooper/id1345689462?i=1000447965120
Cooper, C., Murphy, S., Hyatt, K. (2021) ‘We are giving LADA all of our money’ [online]. The Live Art Almanac Volume 6. Janković, B. [Ed]. Live Art Development Agency. London. Available: https://www.thisisliveart.co.uk/2019/02/07/we-are-giving-lada-all-of-our-money-a-statement-from-charlotte-cooper-simon-murphy-and-kay-hyatt/
Cooper, C. E. (2009) ‘Charlotte Cooper’ [Online]. The Femilist. New York. Available: http://thefemilist.wordpress.com/femilist-features/charlotte-cooper/
Damigou Papoti, N. (2020) ““I Think Art and Activism Are the Same”: Charlotte Cooper on Fat Art, the War on Obesity, and Punk as an Assertive Femme Sensibility” Run Riot. Available: http://www.run-riot.com/articles/blogs/%E2%80%9Ci-think-art-and-activism-are-same%E2%80%9D-charlotte-cooper-fat-art-war-obesity-and-punk-ass
Fox, O. (2021) “Do-It-Yourself Revolution with Charlotte Cooper” Multiple Os. Available: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1739291/8365154
Johnson-Small, J. (2015) ‘Charlotte Cooper’ in Bitches Minute [online]. London. available http://bitchesminute.tumblr.com/post/101075972416/bitches-minute-with-dr-charlotte-cooper-photo
Ledger, E. (2010). Charlotte Cooper. In: Ledger, E. (ed.) The World’s A Mess and Yr My Only Cure. Doncaster. Unedited version (.pdf, 112kb)
Milk, A. (2011) FutureNature/National Minimum Rage zine. Read the interview (.pdf, 61kb)
O’Callahan, P. (2010) ‘Charlotte Cooper’s Festival Thoughts’ [Online]. London. Unedited version (.pdf, 49kb)
Zobl, E. and Jiménez, H. (2007) ‘Story Zines, Kink and many more: an interview with Charlotte Cooper from London’ [Online]. http://grrrlzines.net/interviews/kink.htm. You can read an archived version of this page via the Wayback Machine.