The performative legacies of the women’s peace camp at Greenham Common: beyond monuments

This chapter examines the legacies of the women’s peace camp at Greenham Common (1981-2000) as exemplary feminist heritage. Known for the ingenuity and efficacy of its visual activism, the peace camp became both the site and reference point of a range of artistic practices, some of which are analysed here, not merely as artworks but as templates for a feminist counter-monumental approach to heritage, where commemoration doubles as reactivation. The chapter approaches the common itself as a complex and contested heritage site. Sculptural monuments are compared and contrasted to art practices in a range of other media, from performance to film and printed textiles. Despite (or rather thanks to) the latter’s ephemerality and reliance on active audience participation, these counter-monumental tributes to Greenham are better suited to feminism’s iconoclastic refusal of fixity.