Helena Reckitt

Plumstead bus garage; dark days.

“A shit dog is better than any regular human.” Quote of the day from the proprietor of a local cafe with large DOGS WELCOME sign on the door. Who am I to argue? [nb Mabel and Ripley are extremely Good Dogs and very much not shit.]

Thank you to Rachel Garfield, artist and writer, for yesterday’s moving and beautiful film screening and reading group ‘So close/So distant.’ Selections of films by Su Friedrich, Michelle Citron, and Alina Marazzi - all rarely screened in the Uk - opened up discussions about the use of home movies, found footage, interviews and dramatic staging, editing and palimpsest. We talked about how the artists navigated their complex relationships with mothers living and dead, filling in gaps of memory, while grappling with feelings of ambivalence, admiration and loss. Material questions of location and class, social roles and constraints, as well as psychiatric diagnoses and treatments, informed our discussions. Perhaps inevitably, conversations led to thoughts about our own ‘mummy issues,’ as daughters as well as, in some cases, parents. Discussions about citation and the creative and subversive uses of critical theory continued in our group reading of Abigail Child’s essay ‘Active Theory.’ Thanks to those of you who resisted the lure of a sunny afternoon in the park to join us for such a rich encounter and exchange. Pics 6-10 Su Friedrich The Ties That Bind; 11-13 Michelle Citron Daughter Rite; 14-20 Alina Marazzi For One More Hour With You. @rachel.garfield @helmut_recko

Modest flier for what I hope will be a stirring talk, drawing inspiration from earlier feminists who blazed a trail and gave no fucks 🔥 next week at the University of Palermo, Sicily; organised as part of the three-day feminist research residency and summer school of the same name at Studio Claire Fontaine @foreignerseverywhere @gabbymoser @bea__ct @anita.chari.embody

My dear friend Rachel Garfield has organised what promises to be a beautiful and poignant film programme and reading group around mother-daughter relations told through methods of fragmentation and experimentation. Selections from work by Michelle Citron, Su Friedrich, and Alina Marazzi will be introduced by Rachel, after which we will read together (text tbc). Booking is free but places in the cinema at Goldsmiths are fast filling up. Details and booking here /events/feministdurationreadinggroup/2156763 @rachel.garfield @feministduration

So glad that I got to see Beatrice Gonzalez’s luminous exhibition at the Barbican, even if some of it was almost too much to take 💔

I am so looking forward to this research workshop on Thursday. Alice Corble, Alison Donnell and Dot Jia Zhihan will be sharing tools for creative research into under-represented cultures and lineage, with a focus on networks of solidarity and friendship in the Anglo-Caribbean and UK-based ESEA Feminisms. It’s part of the series ‘Feminist Tools for Working Across Difference’ that the fdrg devised with Catherine Grant (Courtauld),Tanya Serisier (Birkbeck), and Franceso Ventrella (Sussex). 💥 a few free places are left /events/feministdurationreadinggroup/2117796 @feministduration @dotjia @atimeofonesown @f_ventrella

Down with mum for the weekend; skies are especially lovely tonight @TankertonSlopes

Are you going to The Gaudy? A question directed to my former college mates; the fact that I do so via this generalised route reflects how little I remain in touch with friends from that somewhat torturous period of my life.

What a treat to spend time with the iconic filmmaker Pratibha Parmar at yesterday’s fdrg session at Goldsmiths CCA organised and facilitated by Beth Bramich. 👏 We watched two of Pratibha’s sumptuous films, Khush, exploring queer South Asian life and desire, and Double the Trouble, Twice the Fun, centring lgbt people with disabilities. Both films are suffused with sensuality and tenderness, visual complexity and wit. It was fascinating to hear Pratibha speak about how her lack of training as a filmmaker or artist led her to break the rules of TV filmmaking, even without trying. It is, as she noted, impossible to imagine Channel 4, or any other mainstream TV platform, commissioning such audacious and formally creative films today. 💐 Together we also read Pratibha’s essay, The Moment of Emergence, from the groundbreaking collection Queer Looks which she co-edited with Martha Gever and John Greyson. 📖 In conversation with Beth and members of the deliberately small and intense audience Pratibha reviewed the changing contexts and conditions in which she has worked. Although it was never easy to do the kind of paradigm shifting creative work she did, she drew attention to the worsening conditions of cultural production and the rise of nationalisms, genocides and anti trans legislation, including in India. 😡 Discussions highlighted her prescient incorporation of signing in Double Trouble, the limits of the politics of representation without a commitment to political transformation, and the eroticism of her filmic gaze. 👍🏽 An anecdote that she shared of meeting Derek Jarman for tea at Maison Bertaux in Soho, where he praised Praibha’s layering of floral imagery in Double Trouble, at a time when he was becoming more attuned to colour and texture as his own eyesight started to fail, will long stay with me. 🙏 @mzpratibha @bethsaha @feministduration @goldsmithscca 💥 Image 3: Khush; 4&5 Double Trouble, Twice the Fun

“Why do I have to cite a bunch of stuff I don’t give a shit about in order to prove that I know something? Why do I have to opt into the whole patriarchal history of knowledge in order to be known as somebody who can say anything at all?” 🔥 Anita Chari 💥 can’t believe that I get to share time and space with this Queen in Palermo next month as part of the ‘Refusals and Practices of Freedom’ feminist study school and research residency 😮 just finished reading her book on Claire Fontaine, co-organiser of the study school, which ends with a brilliant conversation from which I took these notes. 💭 other worlds are possible ⚡️ @anita.chari.embody @foreignerseverywhere @gabbymoser

Bloody hell! Reading artists’ tributes to Adrian in today’s Guardian feels a bit like attending his funeral before he is dead. The depth of appreciation and love is truly moving./artanddesign/2026/apr/03/adrian-searle-guardian-art-critic-tributes-ofili-whiteread