Boy and girls in projects about fingernails, food, feminists, and cars.

Today we're going to hit Piccolino for lunch. I hope they have pasta with orange and anchovies. After the meal, we're going to drop by a couple of the other Fierce projects, the other two of which feature collaborations with young women and girls: Influences and Car Deconstruction.

Phoebe Davis' Influences is great; I checked it out last night at the festival hub, but today should be better because will be in a real nail salon. Short version: young women and girls research women who have done work around particular issues of interest, then they adhere a small photograph of the women to the audiences' fingernails. Especially nice for me was the discussion I had with the young 13-year-old nail technician/performer who helped me understand the phenomenon of gangs in Birmingham and told me about the work of Penny Woolcock, a filmmaker who has worked with young people in the area. I am now sporting Penny's visage on my fingernail.

Dina Roncevic's Car Deconstructions features a small group of teen girls, who have been given a basic introduction to car mechanics and have now been tasked with entirely taking apart an entire car. I dropped by last night and, much like some of my favourite of Mammalian's projects, what they say is what you get: girls taking apart a car.

It's good to see so many thoughtful and rigorous projects that collaborate with young people. The ubiquity of them in Fierce makes it feel like a very different situation, with hints of post-generationality in the air. Yeah, that's a newly minted word, by which I mean an understanding of the social sphere wherein generations are not cleaved from each other, with some assigned to the classroom, some to the workforce and some to the pasture. Instead, we try to find ways of being together productively that recognize the interest and abilities of all, and especially recognizes that value is being produced, and insights are being generated. And, as well: we're having a good time.

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