Gender in IZOLYATSIA: Seams of Patriarchy and Identity Tailoring

Curator: Olena Chervonik
20 April–8 July 2012
Foundation IZOLYATSIA. Platform for Cultural Initiatives
Svitlogo Shliahu St.3, Donetsk, 83029 Ukraine
Hours: Thursday–Sunday, 10am–6pm
T 38 062 388 18 20
F 38 062 388 18 21
M 38 050 577 26 20
info@izolyatsia.org

http://www.izolyatsia.org/en/

Gender in IZOLYATSIA: Seams of Patriarchy and Identity Tailoring

IZOLYATSIA is continuing to re-inhabit the industrial structures of a former insulation materials factory by gradually integrating them into the art-centre's cultural operations. On 20 April, 2012, IZOLYATSIA opens a new exhibition space MEDPUNKT which will serve as an experimental curatorial platform for young Ukrainian artists.

Reconstruction at IZOLYATSIA presupposes considerable preservation of the existing industrial architecture and design. Through rehabilitating, as opposed to tearing down and rebuilding, the reconstruction process aims to incorporate the history of the site on both visual and verbal levels. The industrial constructions are refurbished with due regard to their original function and their former names are retained to pay tribute to the factory's past. The name of the arts foundation itself—IZOLYATSIA—is inherited from the factory and remains a direct reference to the history of the space, which is now attaining a new role and mission. Following the same logic, the old names of various spaces are preserved and made to serve new ends. MEDPUNKT used to be a medical station where factory workers would receive initial and sometimes urgent medical treatment, hence the highly symbolic significance of the new exhibition space's name.Concise curatorial statements will reveal zones requiring immediate reaction and more elaborate treatments, thus paving path for further projects at IZOLYATSIA and more generally amongst other Ukrainian social and cultural actors.

The first MEDPUNKT exhibition is dedicated to the problematics of gender in the Ukrainian context. Self-fashioning lies at the core of the productive understanding of gender. People are born with some biological differences, yet their behavioral models have no straightforward correlation to their biological sex. People are generally conditioned to think and act in accordance with the gender norms accepted and (re)produced in a particular society. Patriarchy functions as gender police within a dictatorial system, surveilling and enforcing the imposed narrowly defined gender stereotypes. The fascist-like repression of sensitivity towards gender formation leads to socio-cultural neuroses, which trigger violent responses directed both at society and at one's own subjectivity. A reevaluation of the gender problematics is especially pertinent to the Ukrainian society today, where deep-seated patriarchal assumptions about gender distribution and their recruitment in today's power struggles are (re)producing a belief system that persecutes difference.

Avoiding an unreflected enumeration of possible Ukrainian gender stereotypes, the exhibition strives to uncover social and psychological mechanisms of gender construction. One group of artists singles out role playing and mimicry as the main constituents of gender performance. Viktoria Myroniuk and Roman Bodnarchuk, Maryna Skugareva, Ksenia Hnylytska, Lada Nakonechna, Alina Kopytsia, Lesia Khomenko and Zhanna Kadyrova try to rationalize and explain why people follow counterproductive and destructive gender patterns. Alina Kleitman, Lubov Malikova, and Masha Kulikovska employ the abject art paradigm to reflect on the experiences of those whose mental and physical wiring does not correspond to the accepted gender roles of a particular society. Oleksiy Salamnov, Masha Shubina, and Synchrodogs Art Collective postulate metaphoric ways of undermining the rigidity and the reproduction of imposed gender patterns.To organize the special excursions please contact us by phone 38 050 477 26 20 or send us e-mail to info@izolyatsia.org.

Cláudia Dias no N.E.C.

Encontro com Cláudia Dias

Criações e Questões: Uma visita seguida de conversa.

14/04 - 18h

NEC - Sala 6X6

Avenida Rodrigues de Freitas, nº 164, 1º

Porto

Nasceu em Lisboa, em 1972. Iniciou a sua formação em dança na Academia Almadense. Continuou os seus estudos como bolseira na Companhia de Dança de Lisboa. Frequentou o Curso de Formação de Intérpretes de Dança Contemporânea, promovido pelo Fórum Dança e o Curso de Formação Profissional em Gestão de Organizações e Projetos Culturais, promovido pela Cultideias. Atualmente, frequenta o Mestrado em Artes Cénicas, na Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas, Universidade Nova de Lisboa.

Iniciou o seu trabalho como intérprete no Grupo de Dança de Almada. Integrou o coletivo Ninho de Víboras. Colaborou com a Re.Al tendo sido uma intérprete central na estratégia de criação de João Fiadeiro e no desenvolvimento, sistematização e transmissão da Técnica de Composição em Tempo Real.
Desenvolveu um projeto pedagógico na área da composição coreográfica, em parceria com Márcia Lança, que deu origem à peça Vende-se país solarengo com vista parao mar. Foi intérprete na peça Morro como País, encenada por John Romão.
Criou as peças One Woman Show, Visita Guiada, Das coisas nascem coisas, Vontade de ter vontade ea performance/instalação 23+1.
O seu trabalho como coreógrafa, performere professora tem sido acolhido por várias estruturas, teatros e festivais nacionais e internacionais.
Cláudia Dias - EN

Mujeres Públicas

Mujeres Públicas es un grupo feminista de activismo visual que trabaja colectivamente desde el año 2003. Nuestra propuesta es el abordaje de lo político a partir de la creatividad como alternativa a formas más tradicionales de militancia. Uno de nuestros objetivos es denunciar y hacer visibles situaciones y lugares de opresión que vivimos las mujeres como sujetos sociales a través de la producción y puesta en circulación de herramientas simbólicas. Intentamos, a través de nuestras acciones, denunciar y desnaturalizar prácticas y discursos sexistas que encontramos profundamente arraigados en nuestra cultura. Desde un principio pensamos el espacio público como el lugar más apropiado para desplegar y poner en diálogo lo que producimos. Con la intención de alentar a la reapropiación, elegimos utilizar materiales de bajo costo para hacer afiches, objetos y acciones que pegamos en la calle, repartimos y dejamos en diferentes contextos y creamos esta página Web a través de la cual se puede acceder y bajar la mayor parte de nuestro trabajo. De este modo intentamos producir, también, recepciones dispersas y abiertas en contraposición a la tradicional contemplación artística así como posibilitar múltiples interpretaciones eludiendo el discurso lineal del panfleto político.

http://www.mujerespublicas.com.ar/

10 Things That Feminism Could Do Better - Nina Power

I should start by saying that this list should in no way be seen as an attack on anyone actively involved in feminist politics, or on the history of the women’s liberation movement. The fruits of feminism reflect the most successful and long-term social revolution that human history has ever seen — this should never be forgotten. The list is simply a set of personal reflections on some current dimensions of the struggle, and could equally well be applied to women in general, as opposed to just those who identify themselves as feminists.


1. Feminism should realign itself with movements committed to social justice, and reclaim its ties to other progressive movements, such as the gay rights movement and campaigns for racial equality. Feminism has sometimes allowed itself to become distracted by debates about essentialism (particularly in Britain), leading to ugly attempts to exclude trans-women from feminist debates, for example. Feminism needs to have a strategic and inclusive definition of “femaleness,” which avoids compounding the oppression heaped on those who are already more likely to be the victims of violence and discrimination.

2. At the same time, the word ‘feminism’ itself (and the battles it wages) should become much clearer and stronger. In an age in which Sarah Palin can describe herself as a feminist, despite passing anti-abortion legislation, the word needs to be reclaimed by the left and placed firmly back among broader questions of class, exploitation and oppression.

3. Feminism should not be misled by the successes of individual women at the top of their professions (politicians, CEOs, etc.). Better than thinking of these women as “tokens,” though, we would do well to see them as (sometimes) being “decoys” (as described by Zillah Eisenstein in Sexual Decoys). Which is to say, simply because they are women and successful, the success (and therefore end) of feminism is frequently announced by the media, and their noxious politics are ignored (think of Margaret Thatcher). Feminism would do well to remember how the struggle for real equality and fair income can sometimes be disguised by the purported success of the odd individual woman.  

4. Feminism should be concerned with all women everywhere, and be careful not to focus on the experience of small groups of women in the West. Issues such as immigrant labor (which frequently revolves around childcare and housework for other families) often involve women from other parts of the world leaving behind their own families, and the misery that this entails. The issues affecting women in richer parts of the world may sometimes obscure the struggles against oppression, violence and economic exploitation taking place in poorer countries. Western feminism must not cut itself off from the rest of the world: there are many groups working and fighting for grassroots feminist activism around the world — feminists everywhere should see themselves as part of the same global struggle, whilst nevertheless paying attention to the differences that exist in different parts of the world as part of this shared struggle.

5. Feminism should be wary of believing the fight has been won. Keeping up the pressure on those who would roll back the achievements of the women’s movement (abortion rights, workplace legislation against discrimination, etc.) is a matter of urgency and perpetual vigilance. In Italy, for example, female pay has dropped to 40 percent less than a man’s pay for the same work; at the same time 46 percent of women there are unemployed. Berlusconi’s TV stations spew out endless game-shows featuring scantily clad young women pretending to be stupid. Things can always get worse: the point is to stop them before they do.

6. Contemporary feminism should avoid ghettoized debates of the ‘sex work good/sex work bad’ or ‘porn good/porn bad’ type. While these are clearly important issues with wide cultural significance, not to mention involving the immediate impact on the lives of women involved in such work, such debates, if they simply involve mudslinging, avoid confronting economic reality in favor of a purely moral or personal stance.

7. Feminism should avoid reducing all questions of women’s lives to issues concerning sexuality and sexual behavior. Although the unhappy relation between production and reproduction forms one of the major contradictions of contemporary work, if feminism spends too much time focusing in on questions of sexuality, it risks losing sight of other significant questions — unequal pay, non-sexual violence, and so on.

8. Feminists should be aware of the co-optation of the rhetoric of female liberation in the name of imperialism. The invocation of “women’s liberation” in the military campaigns against Afghanistan and Iraq was a terrible development, both for the meaning of feminism and for the feminist movements on the ground in those countries. The rise of a “feminism” that uses bombs to make its point is no feminism at all. “Western” feminism should be wary of being opposed to supposedly regressive religious movements and different cultures; rather it should pay attention and aid those genuinely feminist movements in repressive countries from the ground up.

9. The women’s movement should campaign for fairer and better work, even in the midst of an economic crisis. The news that for the first time in human history, there are now more women than men in the U.S. workforce should be understood in all its complexity. Women’s mass entry into the workforce is of course cause for celebration in the financial independence it affords individual women; however, if that work is non-unionized, precarious, poorly paid and unpleasant, then feminism should be very wary of being too one-sidedly happy about the rise of this work. The flipside of the so-called “mancession” in the U.S. (the idea that men are losing their jobs at a faster rate than women) is the possibility that employers have realized they can pay women less for the same work and are therefore more likely to keep them on, whilst making no concessions to the difficulties of childcare for either men or women.

10. Feminists of different ages, with or without children, gay or straight, should be wary of seeing too many differences between generations of women. To this end, perhaps the talk of “waves” hides more similarities than it reveals. Paying attention to the history of feminism avoids repeating too many of the same conversations, whilst at the same time helps to provide answers to problems which, despite certain differences, have remained the same for many decades.

Nina Power is a British philosopher and feminist, who published a must-read book, One Dimensional Woman. Power’s brand of feminism stands apart because, as she has been known to say, we’ve had the “c”-word wrong all along. Indeed, capitalism is behind most of the issues facing women today. (Her book nods at Herbert Marcuse’s 1964 One-Dimensional Man, which detailed the delusive freedoms of the capitalist system.) Power’s book is a fascinating read, as she tackles subjects ranging from the farcical feminism of Sarah Palin to the usurping of feminism — packaged as “women’s liberation” — to validate the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Power is witty, biting and thoughtful in her analysis, and a departure from mainstream feminist thinkers today.
source

Sarah Pierce: The Artist Talks

The Show Room

The Artist Talks
18 April – 2 June 2012

Preview: Tuesday 17 April, 6.30-8.30pm

Opening hours: Wednesday – Saturday, 12-6pm
63 Penfold Street
London NW8 8PQ

Events:
The Artist Talks: After Rilke
Tuesday 8 May, 6.30-8.30pm
Introduced by Sarah Pierce with Dave Beech, Melissa Gronlund and Grant Watson

The Artist Talks
Saturday 2 June, 4-8pm
Group performance with Sarah Pierce and a series of readings with The Happy Hypocrite followed by launch of Again, A Time Machine published by Book Works.

"The Artist Talks is an exhibition of new work by Dublin-based artist Sarah Pierce, co-commissioned by Book Works and The Showroom. It is the final part of a year-long project undertaken by the artist as part of Book Works’ tour of new commissions and archival presentations, Again, A Time Machine."

Art, Gendered Labour and Resistance

Convened in collaboration with Angela Dimitrakaki (University of Edinburgh) - 15 June 2012

2 - 5pm

      Mika Rottenberg, Dough (video still), 2006, C-print

The Space

Artists and theorists from the UK and Europe explore new understandings of gendered labour. Featuring Jo Applin, Angela Dimitrakaki, Julia Morandeira, Nina Power, Maria Ruido and Marina Vishmidt, this half day symposium will touch on the issue of generational thinking in feminist analyses of labour; art as gendered labour, and the link between work and resistance to oppression.

Angela Dimitrakaki is Lecturer in Contemporary Art History and Theory at the Department of History of Art at the University of Edinburgh.

Jo Applin is a lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Art at the University of York.

Nina Power is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Roehampton University.

Julia Morandeira is a researcher, curator and organiser.

Maria Ruido is an artist, filmmaker, researcher and cultural producer.

Marina Vishmidt is a writer, researcher and filmmaker.

Nottingham Contemporary’s public programme is jointly funded by Nottingham Trent University and The University of Nottingham.

Faces de Eva

Faces de Eva. Centro de Estudos sobre a Mulher é uma unidade de investigação criada na Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas da Universidade Nova de Lisboa. Teve como antecedente um Projecto de Investigação com o mesmo nome, sediado no Instituto Pluridisciplinar de História das Ideias da mesma Faculdade. O alargamento do núcleo inicial pelo ingresso de novos membros e a sua crescente especialização justificava a existência de um Centro com estrutura adequada. Proposta e aprovada a sua criação na reunião da Comissão Coordenadora do Conselho Científico realizada no dia 3 de Maio de 2001, teve desde então estatutos próprios que definiam a sua área epistemológica específica, assim como os objectivos que pretendia alcançar mediante acções concertadas de investigação, de formação e de divulgação.

Não tendo sido por acaso que nasceu sob o signo da pluridisciplinaridade, o Centro manteve a opção inicial, promovendo uma total abertura tanto na admissão de graduadas e de graduados nas diversas áreas de saber, como na colaboração solicitada a especialistas com diversa formação de base. E assim tornou sua a concepção de que a transversalidade constituiu não só um enriquecimento, mas é também faceta fundamental desta área de saber. A mulher esteve sempre presente na sociedade de múltiplas formas, sem que a sociedade guardasse a memória do seu contributo, que por ter sido silenciado não foi menos real. Só a transversalidade, resolvida na pluralidade das abordagens, a podia descobrir onde quer que ela se encontrasse.
Consciente desta realidade e no intuito de lembrar o que estava esquecido, o Centro chamou a si a tarefa de elaborar um Dicionário no Feminino. Aqui, um sem número de mulheres “libertam-se da lei da morte” porque, não só os nomes ignorados como os menos lembrados daquelas que participaram activamente na vida da sociedade do seu tempo, iriam constar das suas páginas. O mesmo acontecia com as instituições que elas fundaram, os periódicos que editaram, as iniciativas a que deram corpo. O contributo desta publicação como instrumento de trabalho para quem se quiser debruçar sobre o modo e a forma da presença das mulheres no mundo que as rodeava e que não raras vezes lhes era adverso não deixa dúvidas.
Idêntico objectivo – dar a conhecer – preside ao projecto editorial da Revista que o Centro edita semestralmente. Intitulada Faces de Eva . Estudos sobre a mulher, transmite em estudos e noutros textos os resultados de investigações realizadas por autores ligados ou não ao Centro e distribuídos por secções intituladas Entrevistas, Retratos, Toponímia, Pioneiras, Estado da Questão, Notícias. A Revista coloca, assim, nas mãos dos leitores a possibilidade de conhecerem uma realidade do presente e do passado, que por vezes lhe escapa, mas que não é por isso menos real. Apraz registar que o nº. 5 recebeu o Prémio Divulgação Elina Guimarães atribuído pelas ONG’s do Conselho Científico da CIDM.

O Centro não ignora que aprofundar os conhecimentos exige estudo e investigação, assim como implica dialogar e divulgar, ensinar e aprender. Para dar resposta a estas múltiplas implicações, realizou um primeiro Colóquio em 1999. Dedicado a Leonor da Fonseca Pimentel (“a portuguesa de Nápoles”, ali considerada como uma heroína, mártir da liberdade, aqui esquecida) no bicentenário da sua morte, juntou por nossa iniciativa um primeiro grupo de intervenientes. Em Maio de 2001 realizou, com êxito, o 1º Curso Livre intitulado Falar de mulheres. Da igualdade à paridade. Em 2003 realizou no mesmo mês o 2º Curso Livre que, sob o mesmo título genérico, privilegiou a História e Historiografia. Este ano, também no mesmo mês, vai realizar o 3º Curso Livre privilegiando o Género e a Memória.
Por último, uma notícia a muitos títulos gratificante encerra o conjunto de actividades do Centro. Trata-se da abertura no ano lectivo (2003-2004) do 1º Curso de Pós-graduação em Estudos sobre a Mulher. As mulheres na Sociedade e na Cultura, numa iniciativa conjunta do Centro e da FCSH. As mulheres serão a sua referência, e a transversalidade o seu caminho. A universalidade da formação de base (licenciatura), conjuga-se com a possibilidade do curso poder ser frequentado para obtenção de grau académico ou em regime de curso livre (sem exigência de avaliação). Com esta iniciativa, o Centro de Estudos sobre a Mulher e a Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas /UNL dão os primeiros passos num caminho há muito iniciado pelas mais célebres Universidades da Europa e da América.
Outras iniciativas estão ainda no mundo dos sonhos... Em breve se hão-de concretizar...