NOW YOU CAN GO

Now You Can Go is a programme of events considering feminist thinking, art and activism, hosted at The Showroom, the ICA, Space Studios and Raven Row, 1–13 December 2015

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Feminist Duration Reading Group: Transfeminismo

Tues 3 May,  7pm-9pm SPACE, 129–131 Mare Street, Hackney London, E8 3RH

The next meeting of the Feminist Duration Reading Group will focus on Spanish Transfeminismo. We will start with an extract from the film My Sexuality is an Art Creation, by Lucía Egaña Rojas (2011). Together we will then read and discuss a translation of the Manifesto Transfeminista (2010). As the translation will be projected on the evening, there is no need for you to bring along a physical copy.

The Feminist Duration Reading Group is open to all.

For copies of Juan Vincente Aliaga’s article And the altar started to moan and groan! Transfeminist artistic practices in Spain, a taxonomy, 2015, which will provide valuable context, please email: [email protected]

Please contact Persilia for directions [email protected]

More information

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Feminist Duration: A Reading Group on Feminisms, Consciousness-Raising and Leave-Taking

Tues 5 April,  7pm-9pm SPACE, 129–131 Mare Street, Hackney London, E8 3RH

The next meeting of the Feminist Duration Reading Group will focus on the writing of Gloria Anzaldúa and Barbara Christian.

Together we will read selections from Anzaldúa’sBorderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987), which departs from the Texas-US Southwest/Mexican border situation to address the psychological, sexual, spiritual borderlands inherent in any individual.

Beforehand, we invite everyone to read Barbara Christian’s short essay ‘The race for theory’ (1987) to remind us how “much of the literature of the West has become pallid, laden with despair, self-indulgent, and disconnected.”

We will start with a brief screening of a performance by the writer and artist Grada Kilomba.

This meeting will build on earlier explorations in the Feminist Duration Reading Group on experimental feminist writings, including forms of storytelling, auto/biography and mythobiography.

The Feminist Duration Reading Group focuses on lesser-known positions and perspectives outside the dominant Anglo-American feminist canon in a spirit of collective exploration.

The Feminist Duration Reading Group is open to all.

Please contact the Feminist Duration organisers for copies of a reading by Gloria Anzaldúa and Barbara Christian to accompany the meeting:[email protected]

Please contact Persilia for [email protected]

More information

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Feminist Duration: A Reading Group on Feminisms, Consciousness-Raising and Leave-Taking

Tues 1 March,  7pm-9pm SPACE, 129–131 Mare Street, Hackney London, E8 3RH

In the next meeting of the Feminist Duration Reading Group we  will put into practice one of the ‘affidamento’ (entrustment) exercises developed by the Milan Women’s Bookstore collective in the 1980s. We will follow instructions provided by the artist Alex Martinis Roe. Alex led a two-day workshop Our Future Network in December 2015 as part of the ‘Now You Can Go’ programme. Some participants from that workshop will be present to help to share these feminist practices.

The Feminist Duration Reading Group is open to all.

Please contact the Feminist Duration organisers for copies of a reading by Alex Martinis Roe to accompany the meeting: [email protected] The Feminist Duration Reading Group is open to all. Please contact Persilia for directions [email protected]

More information

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Documentation now online

Now You Can Go was a 13 day programme of events, discussions and screenings exploring Italian Feminisms of the 60s and 70s and how they apply to a contemporary art context. Inspired by the work of artist and activist Carla Lonzi and running December 1 to 13 at The Showroom, the ICA, Space Studios and Raven Row it explores the work and ideas of collectives formed during this time –Rivolta Femminile (Female Revolt), Libreria delle Donne di Milano (Milan Women’s Bookstore Collective), and Lotta Femminista (Feminist Struggle). The programme was documented by Video in Common and the videos available online.

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Feminist Duration: A Reading Group on Feminisms, Consciousness-Raising and Leave-Taking

Tues 2 February,  7pm-9pm SPACE, 129–131 Mare Street, Hackney London, E8 3RH

Following the intensive Now You Can Go programme of events across several London arts venues in December 2015, which grew out of the Feminist Duration Reading Group, in the February meeting we will reflect on the programme and discuss ideas for future readings. The Feminist Duration Reading Group is open to all. Please contact Persilia for directions [email protected]

More information

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Our Future Network: Workshop with Alex Martinis Roe

Thu 11 and Fri 12 Dec 2015, 10.30am-5pm The Showroom, 63 Penfold Street, NW8 8PQ London, United Kingdom

Led by artist Alex Martinis Roe the workshop focuses on trans-generational collective politics and is a chance to experiment practically with some Italian feminist collective practices as a way to continue inventing and imagining new ones. 

Participants will undertake a series of exercises based on collective political practices developed by the Milan Women’s Bookstore Collective from the 1970s to today. This workshop would suit those who have an interest in collective political practices and/or feminism. Extensive knowledge of feminist history or theory is not necessary to participate, although a willingness to engage in a short selection of preparatory readings is important. 

Booking essential: letter of interest required (see below)

Light refreshments provided. Please bring contributions for a vegetarian group lunch each day. TO APPLY If you would like to participate, please send a brief description of your motivations to [email protected] and await a response/further instructions.

COST £18/£10 concessions 

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Feminist Duration: A Reading Group on Feminisms, Consciousness-Raising and Leave-Taking

Tues 1 December,  7pm-9pm SPACE, 129–131 Mare Street, Hackney London, E8 3RH

The next meeting of the Feminist Duration Reading Group will focus on translation as a feminist practice.

Together we will read sections of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's "The Politics of Translation" from her book Outside in the Teaching Machine (1993). Though the essay does not relate directly to the reading group’s primary focus on the texts and practices of Italian feminisms, we will consider how Spivak's emphasis on translation as an imperative for feminist politics relates to the group’s overall aims and ambitions. 

Three short introductory excerpts, taken from Italian feminist texts in English-language editions, are included as supplementary reading. Teresa de Lauretis and Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum's translation notes, though brief, highlight several issues relating to the interpretation of Italian feminist texts in a second language. Navigating these issues, Sandra Kemp and Paola Bono's introduction to The Lovely Mirror: Italian Perspectives on Feminist Theory presents, instead of a traditional introductory text, a Q&A between a British academic and her Italian colleague.

The Feminist Duration Reading Group is open to all. Please contact the Feminist Duration organisers if you would like to receive the readings: feministduration[at]gmail.com. Please contact Persilia for directions [email protected]

More information

Readings

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty "The Politics of Translation," in Outside in the Teaching Machine, London: Psychology Press, 1993.

Various excerpts including:

de Lauretis, Teresa "The Practice of Sexual Difference and Feminist Thought in Italy: An Introductory Essay," in The Milan Women's Bookstore Collective, Sexual Difference: A Theory of Social-Symbolic Practice, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1990

Chiavola Birnbaum, Lucia Liberazione della donna / Feminism in Italy, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1986

Kemp, Sandra and Bono, Paola "Introduction: Without a leg to stand on," in The Lovely Mirror: Italian Perspectives in Feminist Theory, London: Routledge, 1993

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Now You Can Go: Full Programme

Now You Can Go is a programme of events considering feminist thinking, art and activism, taking place across The Showroom, the ICA, Space Studios and Raven Row, London (1–13 December 2015). Juxtaposing historical with contemporary positions, the series explores feminist concepts of generation and genealogy. It asks whether practices of consciousness-raising and collectivity might help us to combat the fragmentation, exhaustion and anxiety that we experience under networked capitalism. 

The programme draws inspiration from Italian feminisms, including the work of collectives formed in the 1970s: Rivolta Femminile (Female Revolt), Libreria delle Donne di Milano (Milan Women’s Bookstore), and Lotta Femminista (Feminist Struggle).

A touchstone is the work of Carla Lonzi, the writer and cofounder of Rivolta Femminile, and her refusal of power and rejection of masculine creativity that exploits female supportive activity. This process of ‘deculturation’ entailed Lonzi’s withdrawal from her roles as an art critic, as a feminist leader, and from her relationship with her lover, the sculptor Pietro Consagra, which she documented in a dialogue between them called Vai pure (Now You Can Go).

Now You Can Go grows out of the Feminist Duration Reading Group which meets monthly at Space Studios in London. The programme has been developed by participants from the Feminist Duration Reading Group including Angelica Bollettenari, Giulia Casalini, Diana Georgiou, Laura Guy, Irene Revell and Amy Tobin, and is coordinated by Helena Reckitt with Dimitra Gkitsa.

Download the full programme here

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Image: Elaine Shemilt, Doppelgänger, 1979-81, still from video. Courtesy of the artist. 

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Herstories from Italy

Sun 13 Dec, 6-8.30pm The Showroom, 63 Penfold Street, NW8 8PQ London, United Kingdom

Case studies on feminist artistic and militant collectives in Italy by art historian Katia Almerini (Cooperativa Beato Angelico), writer, researcher and curator Giulia Damiani (Le Nemesiache collective) and an exposition of contemporary feminist artistic collectives by Giulia Casalini on behalf of ArchivioQueerItalia.com. Followed by keynote talk by philosopher Olivia Guaraldo on polyvocality and sexual difference and the work of Adriana Cavarero, who is joined in conversation by cultural critic Angie Voela.

Booking available through Eventbrite

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Image: Marinella Pirelli, Doppio Autoritratto, 1974. 16mm transferred to DVD, 10 mins. Courtesy Archivo Marinella Pirelli, Varese.

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Intimate Acts: A feminist workshop

Sun 13 Dec, 10.00am-13.00pm The Showroom, 63 Penfold Street, NW8 8PQ London, United Kingdom

A half-day workshop exploring collective acts of annotation, translation, and recontextualisation in relation to feminist reading and writing.

“Intimate Acts” is an attempt to produce a collective political language through a series of practical activities organised around extracts of existing text. The workshop will consider how strategies of citation, translation, annotation and appropriation can be put into the service of a feminist politics and what is at stake in doing so.

Reading transforms the meaning of a text. Sometimes this transformation manifests as a material intervention. For example, annotations generate an alternative text in the margins of an original. Underlining passages, we single out extracts to return to at a later point, share with others, or else deploy in a different context. Quotations articulate things that matter at the time. They help to give form to our own feelings, desires and demands. Reading allows us access to languages other than our own and in turn gives written language over to circulate as a new set of possibilities.

Feminism has often emphasised experimental forms of literature. It has politicised reading through collective reading groups and by developing radical approaches to translation and distribution. Feminist writers have worked to show how language shapes us and have invented strategies in order to reconfigure, disrupt or undermine what Gertrude Stein once referred to as “patriarchal poetry”. In doing so, feminist literature and theory has made traditional forms of language speak otherwise in the on-going pursuit for self-knowledge and self-determination.

Participants are asked to bring a book with them in which they have underlined a short passage of text.

Booking available through Eventbrite

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Image: Kajsa Dahlberg, A Room of One’s Own / A Thousand Libraries (Ett eget rum / Tusen bibliotek), 2006

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Now You Can Go Seminar

Sat 12 Dec, 11.30am-9.30pm The Showroom, 63 Penfold Street, NW8 8PQ London, United Kingdom

Day-and-evening-long seminar exploring feminist art, thinking and activism, especially in relation to legacies of Italian feminisms. 11.30am Registration and Introduction by curator Helena Reckitt 12pm-1.30pm Don’t Think You Have Any Rights: The Challenges of Italian Feminisms Talks by Fulvia Carnevale of Claire Fontaine; art theorist Marina Vishmidt (by Skype), and art theorist and Carla Lonzi specialist Giovanna Zapperi. 2.30pm – 4.00pm The Challenges of Italian Feminisms Panel Discussion: keynote speakers Fulvia Carnevale of Claire Fontaine and Giovanna Zapperi are joined in discussion by artist Zach Blas and feminist legal theorist Maria Drakopoulou. Chaired by art historian Francesco Ventrella. Including a screening of Alex Martinis Roe’s film A story from Circolo della rosa, 2014, about the Milan Women’s Bookstore Collective. 4.30pm – 6pm In or Out?: On Leaving the Art World and Other Systems, Part 1 First in two-part series of brief presentations on tactics and politics of refusal, withdrawal, and exit. Artist Carla Cruz; artist Andrea Francke; and pedestrian and environmental activist Caroline Russell. Chaired by art historian Catherine Grant. 7pm – 8.30pm In or Out?: On Leaving the Art World and Other Systems, Part 2 Second in two-part series of brief presentations on tactics and politics of refusal, withdrawal, and exit by curator and archivist Karen di Franco; artist Karolin Meunier; artist Raju Rage; and Utopia Arts Artistic Director Frances Rifkin. Chaired by writer and curator Gabrielle Moser. ‘In or Out? On Leaving the Artworld and Other Systems’ is supported by the Women’s Art Library at Goldsmiths, University of London Gabrielle Moser’s participation is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts. 8.30pm – 9.30pm A Feminist Chorus for Feminist Revolt A spoken distillation of the monthly discussions and readings of Italian feminist texts made by the Feminist Duration Reading Group, and gathered into a score by Lucy Reynolds. 

Booking available through Eventbrite

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Image: Carla Lonzi, scanned by Giovanna Zapperi.

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Film Screening: Autoritratti

Fri 11 Dec, 7-9pm The Showroom, 63 Penfold Street, NW8 8PQ London, United Kingdom

Autoritratti is a performative screening employing different methodological tools, including dialogue, autobiography, cross-genre and fragmented narratives. The approach is inspired by Italian feminist thinker Carla Lonzi and her book Autoritratto [Self-portrait] (1969), which was her farewell to the art world.

This screening interlaces ‘self-portraits’ of women artists who have worked around identity and self-definition, in dialogical and confrontational terms towards the ‘other,’ from the 1970s to the present. The selected artists explore their own self and the dual role of being a woman and a professional artist. Using real and interpreted voices, their works address women’s relationships towards their own and male bodies, their love and desires, motherhood, the household, the community, and patriarchal society, history and tradition at large. With the participation of artists Cinzia Cremona, Catherine Elwes, Tina Keane, Maria Teresa Sartori and Elaine Shemilt. Readings by Diana Georgiou. Ketty La Rocca, Appendice per una supplica, 1972; Anna Valeria Borsari, Autoritratto in una stanza, documentario [Self-portrait in a Room, Documentary], 1977; Catherine Elwes, Postcard, 1986; Elisabetta di Sopra, Dust Grains, 2014; Elaine Shemilt, Doppelgänger, 1979-81; Maria Teresa Sartori, The Drawers, 2013; Federica Marangoni, The Box of Life, 1979; Tina Keane, Clapping Songs, 1979; Cinzia Cremona, Before You Now, 2013.

Booking available through Eventbrite

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Image: Tina Keane, Clapping Songs, 1979. Still from video. Courtesy of the artist. 

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Carla Lonzi Teach-In

Thu 10 Dec, 19.15pm Raven Row, 56 Artillery Lane, E1 7LS London, United Kingdom

Carla Lonzi Teach-In led by art historian Teresa Kittler

Booking available through Eventbrite

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Now You Can Go: Rescue Missions: Women’s Art Recovered

Wed 9 Dec, 6.30pm ICA, The Mall, SW1Y 5AH London, United Kingdom

Chaired by art historian Amy Tobin, speakers include artist Sonia Boyce, director of the Live Art Development Agency, Lois Keidan, art collector Valeria Napoleone and co-director of Hollybush Gardens, Lisa Panting.

In recent years various women artists, previously little-known outside feminist art circles, have been ‘rediscovered’ by artists, art historians, curators, collectors and dealers. These overdue rehabilitations often take place when artists are at the ends of their careers, or when they have already died. This talk considers some of the ethics, responsibilities of researching, archiving, curating, restaging, marketing and collecting women’s art, and the extent to which these activities combat its historical erasure. It asks which aspects of art by women are gaining visibility, and which are still unfashionable—or even troubling—today.

Tickets available through the ICA website

- Monica Ross, Acts of Memory, Photo: Bernard G Mills

Image: 

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Feeling Backwards, Two workshops with Nina Wakeford

Sun 6 and Tues 8 Dec, 7.15pm - 9.15pm Raven Row, 56 Artillery Ln, London E1 7LS

Two-part lecture and workshop with Nina Wakeford  **PLEASE NOTE this is a two day workshop**

Using materials on the methods of oral history from a herstory archive, this lecture and workshop will explore what it means to feel as well as look backwards, as well as the question of what counts as evidence of the past. The event will be in two parts. In the first, there will be a performance-lecture and workshop using materials and methods from an existing archive in order to collate questions that resonate with the themes of Now You Can Go – namely the questions of genealogy, emotions, and collectivity. In the second part there will be an opportunity for participants to report back on answers to these questions that they have been able to generate in between these two sessions. This workshop would suit artists and researchers interested in interviewing and personal testimony. Previous experience with interview methods is not required, although we expect each participant to generate some material in relation to the workshop theme between the sessions.

Feeling Backwards is derived from the title of Heather Love's book Feeling Backward: Loss and the Politics of Queer History (Harvard University Press, 2009).

Booking available through Eventbrite

A number of Bursary tickets are available for those unable to pay. To apply please email: [email protected]

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Image: Nina Wakeford, 484 14th Street, 2014. Digital video, 11 minutes

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Now You Can Go: Marinella Pirelli Screening

Saturday 5 December,  11.30am ICA, The Mall, SW1Y 5AH London, United Kingdom

A leading experimental filmmaker from Italy in the 1960s and 1970s, Marinella Pirelli’s 16mm film explorations of light and movement remained wrapped up in a dark basement for over forty years and have only recently been publicly exhibited again. She was one of the few Italian woman artists working in experimental film and her works traverse numerous thematics connected to the body, the gaze and the relationship with the cinema apparatus/projection event This selection of her works, showing for the first time in the UK, questions the paradigms of image generation and their relationship to narrative and cinematic convention. Included are Il lago, soggettivo-oggettivo (1965), Narciso (1966), Appropriazione, Azione propria, A propria azione, Sole in mano (1973) and Indumenti(1967), that features the Italian writer and feminist leader Carla Lonzi, whose ideas are a touchstone for the Now You Can Go programme.

"Perhaps Narciso contains all the conscious moments of my life. I was three years old when I realised I could remember: for example the birth of my sister, fourteen months younger then me. And later on, recalling this very moment I said to myself: ‘If I remembered, then I also must have had had conscious thought.’ And so I said: ‘I will memorise it’, and I was doing this with all sorts of things that were capturing my attention (flowers, lights, colours, people, gestures, sensations). That’s because I wanted that every present moment was total; me always as a whole of all the things that I was and knew, plus the new moment, to not loose anything, always knowing that every single thing is transitory, lost, over, immediately dead, or better, different. So here is the adventure: the making of a thought, the approaching of the day, the entering of the darkness." Marinella Pirelli, 1966 – 67

Curated by Lucia Aspesi with Irene Revell.

Tickets available through the ICA website

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Image: Marinella Pirelli, Appropriazione A propria azione Azione propria, 1973. Courtesy Archivio Marinella Pirelli, Varese

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Now You Can Go: On Social Reproduction

Saturday 5 December,  11.30am  ICA, The Mall, SW1Y 5AH London, United Kingdom

Speakers from the fields of art, activism, academia and journalism reflect on feminist efforts to transform the work of love and care, including historical struggles over housework and the wage, issues of migrant domestic labour and alternative potential models of collective care. Chaired by Emma Dowling, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, speakers include Justice for Domestic Workers Coordinator Marissa Begonia; co-founders of the critical/activist organisation Plan C, Camille Barbagallo and Nicholas Beuret (via Skype); Guardian journalist Dawn Foster; and art historian Larne Abse Gogarty. With an interruption by artist Pablo Pakula. Tickets available through the ICA website  

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Image: J4DW, Werker Magazine and The Showroom, 2014