Listen ... Sue Gardners blog post about 'women and wikipedia 's only 15% are users' stats ...

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What its like Being a Woman in Philosophy - great site

image by  majena mafe

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and what were doing about what its like  click here ...

Keep This Sex 'in' Sight- book of essays by Elvan Zabunyan, Marie Joseph Bertini and Francoise Gange.

 

Dis Voir

Keep This Sex Out Of My Sight

The Undisplayable of Female Sex as Revealed by Women

Essays by Elvan Zabunyan, Marie Joseph Bertini and Francoise Gange.

Ever since women artists gave themselves the right to declare their sexual fantasies, their work has yielded revelations for those who once declared their fantasies for them. In a raw language that ignores taboos, these women speak of sex like Courbet painted "The Origin of the World." Keep This Sex Out of My Sight is a hymn to women's sex, a celebration of feminine desire, so often erased, hidden and forgotten. For the artists whose texts and images appear here, obscenity and pornography are responses to the male fear of the female sexual organ, and confronting them cancels their power. more ... click here

Film-womens art/history a secret joy/revolution

!WOMEN ART REVOLUTION - A Secret History

!Women Art Revolution (!W.A.R.) charts the evolution of the Feminist Art Movement in America from the 1960s to the present, illuminating how this multi-faceted and under-explored movement—which some claim to be the most significant one of the late 20th century—radically transformed the art and culture of our times.
Armed with a borrowed camera, Hershman Leeson began interviewing fellow artists in her living room, in Berkeley, California, as early as 1966. Through conversations, art, and rarely-seen archival footage, visionary artists, curators and critics present an intimate portrayal of their fight to break down the barriers facing women both in the art world and society at large. The countless groundbreaking figures starring in it include Marcia Tucker, Nancy Spero, Silvia Sleigh, Carolee Schneemann, Miriam Schapiro, B. Ruby Rich, Yvonne Rainer, Yoko Ono, Miranda July, The Guerrilla Girls, Judy Chicago and many others.

!W.A.R. has the rare honor to screen at Berlin, Sundance and Toronto Festivals. It will have its theatrical premiere at New York City’s IFC Center on June 3, 2011. !W.A.R. is a Zeitgeist Films Release.
For more information: www.womenartrevolution.com For future screenings: www.zeitgeistfilms.com


Concurrent Exhibition in New York Feb 26–April 16, 2011?
Touched: A Space of Relations Janine Antoni, Lygia Clark, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Annette Messager?

re.act.feminism exhib

Two visitors to the exhibition 're.act.feminism - Performance art of the 1960s and 1970s today' eye a photograph by Belgrade artist Tanja Ostojic dated 1972 at the Academy of Arts in Berlin, Germany, 12 December 2008

quote from their web site

...'

re.act.feminism – performance art of the 1960’s and 70’s today was an international performance and exhibition project exploring the “return” of feminist performance art of the 1960’s and 70’s in form of re-dos, reenactments, appropriations, new articulations, or archival and documentary projects. The exhibition, performance program and videoarchive featured more than 70 artists from two generations, providing an exemplary overview of gender-critical performance art of the 1960s and 70s in Europe and the USA, and investigating its resonances in current artistic productions.
The curators’ intention was to extend the perspective beyond the canon of the known and familiar in order to demonstrate the diversity and complexity of (feminist) performative strategies. This included performance movements in Eastern and South Eastern Europe as well as the former GDR (since the beginning of the 1980s) which often developed parallel to and independent of ‘western art’.

(read more)

Performance art emerging in the 1960s and 70s was infused with ideas of social emancipation and fundamentally influenced by women artists interested in feminism. Performance art explored the intersection of art and life, of private and public. By focusing on the sentient, creating, knowing, speaking body it is the ideal medium to deconstruct the status of women as art objects and appropriate the subject position, to dramatize the social and physical vulnerability of women’s bodies in a patriarchal society and to deconstruct and subvert notions of stereotypical identity. Moreover, as a new art form, occurring outside the confines of the traditional art space, performance was a medium for collective and social intervention in the public sphere.

The artistic avant-garde of the 1960s and 70s, including feminist performance art, are currently regaining attention among a younger generation of artists and also among institutions. There are several reasons for this interest. On the one hand it reflects the (institutional) desire for the historicisation of performance as an ephemeral art form. On the other hand there seems to be a need of a younger generation to actively appropriate history and –so our thesis– a search for radical artistic expressions reflecting and stimulating social change.

The “return of performance art” seems to be a paradoxical notion. Performance art developed in a time of global awakening in the 1960s and 70s as an ephemeral, process-based art form, in which the body and the actions of artists, and sometimes also those of audiences, became the artistic medium. Performance art opposed notions of object-based art and related strategies of commodification and often left the traditional art institutions, galleries and museums. Performance was therefore understood as embedded in the now, the present moment, and therefore haunted by disappearance, as Peggy Phelan’s has famously stated:

"Performance’s only life is in the present. Performance cannot be saved, recorded, documented or otherwise participate in the circulation of representations of representations: once it does so, it becomes something other than performance. … Performance’s being ... becomes itself through disappearance." (Peggy Phelan, Unmarked, 1993)

However, as many authors have claimed successively performance does not only exist in the live act, but is often intrinsically linked to its recording and reaches a broader audience only through its traces and documentation. Authors such as Paul Clarke and Rebecca Schneider have elaborated further that there might even be a liveness to these traces, documents and recordings, as well as to the process of transmission:

Documents – so their thesis- are mostly produced intentionally for posterity, for a future reading and handling and their liveness lies in this future encounter, in the live circulation and reception, which is anticipated in its live production. The documents and traces, the mythologies and stories may trigger phantasies and inspire to re-enact, re-perform or re-act.

The exhibition re.act.feminism focussed on this contradictory relationship between the live act and its traces and documents, the fragmentary archives and the live reception, and reflected on how (performance)history can be reconstructed and a possible future 'invented'.

Bettina Knaup, Beatrice E. Stammer

The Good Questions- Professor What If... get your feminism here

Great blog Professor What If... finally good questions Click Here
"The purpose of theory...is not to provide a pat set of answers about what to do, but to guide us in sorting out options, and to keep us out of the 'any action/no action' bind. Theory...keeps us aware of the questions that need to be asked." --Charlotte Bunch

delirious hem: Kirsten Kaschock - quote from article

Artist-as-Mother/Mother-as-Artist: A Metaphorical Resurrection

'When we talk about art now, especially radical or experimental art, we talk about war. The artwork achieves, or fails to achieve. It is revolutionary and breaks through barriers, or it falls flat. Postmodern art (of all genres) is valued for its ability to move us forward—to shock, to produce awe. Our zeitgeist is blitzkrieg. Notably, the term avant garde is a military one, and it is precisely this term that makes it difficult to imagine communication with the artist. Either you position yourself behind the vanguard, reaping the benefits of their sacrifice, or you stand opposing them, attempting to cut them down as they hurl their weapons into your culture. The soldiers (the artists) in these metaphors are necessarily silent—and their purpose violent.

Walter Benjamin, in his essay, “The Task of the Translator,” writes:

The basic error of the translator is that he preserves the state in which his own language happens to be instead of allowing his language to be powerfully affected by the foreign tongue. Particularly when translating from a language very remote from his own he must go back to the primal elements of language itself and penetrate to the point where work, image, and tone converge. He must expand and deepen his language by means of the foreign language. It is not generally realized to what extent this is possible… (Benjamin 81)''

for whats said next and the full text click here...
delirious hem: Kirsten Kaschock 2

delirious hem asks what does a feminist poet look like, and thinking again has some thought too

delirious hem recently called for responses to ...what does a feminist writer look like? click here
This is What a Feminist [Poet] Looks Like: what branch of feminism, model of feminist poetics, feminist icon, or etc. informs your poetry? Or, from which of these does your poetry diverge? Are there particular feminist tactics you employ? Do you consider yourself a feminist in many ways, but don't particularly involve it in the poetry? Feel free to take liberties with the questions! Short, long, essay, manifesto, whatever appeals to you!

I submitted a piece focusing more of what she sounds like...click here.

You asked what does a feminist poet look like?

And I want too say that we are not one. Indeed we are multifarious.

I want to reply to this question of who we are, more by exploring notions of what we are and how that effects our, and my methods. I will attempt to explain this through using quotes from the work of Luce Irigaray and Monique Wittig as they affect my work.

Indeed I am ventriloquizing their notions, here, for you. But lets [us] start from the space of the initial question of 'our look', the being seen. We are both visible and yet invisible , we are a nothing to be seen and this has its disadvantages but many advantages.

Irigaray in the Speculum of the Other Woman talks of this. The idea that a ‘nothing to be seen’… might have some reality, would be intolerable to man.

In this ‘virtual’ space, I am not one

Irigaray speaks of this 'she' indeed 'she' is 'the' whole project,

She, meaning me, and us, does not set herself up as a one, (single) female unit.

”She is not closed up, or around, one single truth or essence. The essence of a truth remains foreign to her. She neither has nor is a being. And she does not oppose a feminine truth to a masculine truth. The female sex takes place by embracing itself, by endlessly sharing and exchanging its lips, its edges, its borders, and their ‘content’, as it ceaselessly becomes other, no stability or essence is proper to her”.

Margaret Atwood in her Handmaiden's Tale relays a joke, that is said at the expense of woman but that instead actually outlines our key strength...

“Women, he said jokingly can't add up.

When I asked him what he meant?

He said, for women, one and one and one and one don’t make four.

What do they make? I said, expecting him to say five or three?

but no,

Just one, and one, and one and one, he said”.

(peels of ironic laughter)

This ability to take on complexities is a diffused space that is full of potential for women, writing, saying, thinking, and busy in being.

Irigaray again....

”It is already getting around - at what rate? In what contexts? In spite of what resistances - that women diffuse themselves according to modalities scarcely compatible with the framework of the ruling symbolic. Which doesn’t happen without causing some turbulence, we might even say whirlwinds, that ought to be reconfined within solid walls of principle, to keep them from spreading to infinity” The Sex Which Is Not One.

Instead we can an actively do take on otherness.

again...Irigaray

”Strictly speaking, one cannot say that 'she' mimics anything, for that would suppose a certain intention, a project, a minimum of consciousness.

She instead, is pure mimicry. Which is always the case for inferior species, of course. Needing to define essences, her function requires that she herself have no definition.”

Speculum of the Other Woman

These notions offer very broad and fecund spaces for feminist writers, poets, and theorists to reclaim voice and re shape knowledge claims of what it is to say.

What of my own methods you ask?

I am engaged in becoming the method of my own methods.

I listen carefully to the sound in language and write it.

I ventriloquize women's voices.

I multiply origins.

Dissociating signification's, I excavate voids, condense givens, ply and weave mannerisms, I embrace interferences and seek out and valorize polyphonies.

I am engaged in confusing genres and neutralizing techniques and media and understand this as a creative and politically creative method.

I am a paradox

Sounding language

… a multitude of multitudes

This is a method that produces notions and writing as scores of possibilities. It weaves possibilities into seemingly authentic calculations, a practice like that of Ada Countess of Lovelace.

It is a method that gives rise to monsters with voices, and monstrous voices.

Wittig, in Les Guerillieres, speaks of this colorful monster as in a permanent state of singing...?

“Somewhere there is a siren. Her green body is covered with scales. Her face is bare. The undersides of her arms are a rosy color. Sometimes she begins to sing.

The women say that of her song nothing is to be heard but a continuous O. That is why this song evokes for them, like everything that recalls the O, the zero, the circle the vulval ring”.

Paraphrasing the boys who wrote A Thousand Plateaus…lets, …Transpierce the mountains instead of scaling them, excavate the land instead of straitening it, or be it, be its voice, bore holes in space instead of keeping it smooth, and closed, turn the earth into Swiss cheese, or milk, our milk of words. Turn the frames of the known, the strictures of grammar, the separations of disciplines into their own gaping holes.

My method through this notion is a call to making these frames and language our creative zero.

Wittig again…”At this stage one must interrupt the calculations and begin again at zero. If one makes no mistake with the calculations, if one jumps with both feet together at just the right moment, one will not fall into the snake pit. If one makes no mistakes in the calculations, if one bends down at just the right moment, one will not be caught in the jaws of the trap. At this stage, one must interrupt the calculations, and begin again at zero”.

zero as a starting and being in point?

a zero plus one

plus one

plus one

Wittig… (and my own work continues her project), urges us to “take time, consider this new species that seeks a new language…” Listening to our own tongues, listening for the it in it.

make an effort to invent it

make an effort

and invent if you have to invention.

Thinking again offered a response click here
.. and then I left a comment saying...

Hi…thank you for raising such thoughtful questions re feminism and feminist practice especially in its relation to theory. And thank you for your delicious list of feminist informed writers, I look forward to reading though it. Re your mention of articulating a feminist poetics…I’d like to add to the discussion the work being done into the ‘said’ gap between practice and theory that is as we speak being filled up with a new type of theory, practice led theory and practice as theory. In this framework the insights and particularities, and the voice of a practice, are considered important and valid material to build and shape new theories and ideas across a wide range of disciplines, indeed it is making disciplines into tranies… (trandisciplinarity frameworks). It’s true some feminist theory is written for the world but some is written for a particular audience in that world. Those who can hear it. Innovative, aware, informed practice is always built for our ‘informed peers’, it always strives to move ahead and often way ahead of the dominant cultural and social frames. This isn’t snobbery or elitism but the way new things come into being through the giving and then receivership in some form. New thoughts, perspectives and means are always coming into being in this way. I am engaged in such a practice informed and creating a theory of sounded-language. I submitted the piece ‘what does a feminist poet sound like’ to the discussion on delirious hem and this is one of my key areas of interest and the core of my experimental work in theory/ literature and art.

Your right, in the past the gap between the poets practice and contemporary theory was considered a non issue, particularly and especially in academic circles. Indeed the connection was a non-event, an invisible gap in knowledge recognition. But artists/writers have always both made and made about ideas, issues, and shaped there works as knowledge claims regardless of their reception. But did we hear them? One of the complication was that the arguments/claims/ insights that privilege some notions over others, occurred within disciplines and institutions. Think the halls of the museum and the annals of art history and the halls of English literature departments etc. As the frame of cultural theory and literary and aesthetic theory has expanded, evolved and deliciously complicated each argument and firmly held belief, the artist/writer now ventriloquizes in words/paint not just the subject but their own inherent voice in a range of open experimental in a wide number of ways, transdisciplinary frameworks. The net being one of them

Before, in the not so distant past, ‘the muse’ was recognized as each one of us, practice be it art, writing, ‘the creative response’, lets call it had long been considered delivered muse-made via some sort of vacuum sealed package, though a magic blend of blessing, appeasement and struggle. The artists intensions to ‘the work’ were to be kept at an odd angle separate from the work itself and appreciation of the work that would follow by the expert, which was primarily considered in terms of its aesthetic value…, think of O’Keefe’s painted petals being ‘appreciated’ as examples of pure form…minimalism, precisionist, flattened picture plane etc, or Gertrude Stein’s work as having been built solely to confound and every now and then flirt the titillating secrets of her sexual life. But the artist’s voice and its strong voice at that, is now necessarily been heard as part of the conversation noting what is of value in culture and important to consider re knowledge frames. This voice is gaining ground now, fighting the good fight at the front, principally in academic circles and in Britain and Australia it has spilt over into shaping/ opening or closing down the funding of departments and institutions. This voice and its recognition is now speaking over the smothering voice of traditional notions within aesthetics that has been engaged too long measuring value in terms of a works evocation, calling up sensations etc. There is now a strong history of focus noting that how to write writing from ‘other’ standpoints is key, the individual voice as the principle factors. Result = new writing and ways or writing saying different things. These works are necessarily fragmented and pull at the notion of authorial voice, common sense and nonsense as they make new senses. Within these liminal works bordering theory/practice there are explorations occurring that are parallel to those explored in the most recent literary and cultural theory indeed some are leading them. New forms are being invented to allow for these innovations and the web is one of the most useful of those tools. This fact that this project is occurring in pockets makes the flow of the web even more appropriate for connection.

Feminist practice and theory has long been interested in overthrowing restrictive/ knowledge claims and in creating the voice to do it. And practice led theory and theory led practice is coming up with new ways of thinking and making that voice and its content. This is just one frame being established within a growing range of innovative theory informed practice by artists/writers who are working away in this area, rubbing out the ‘old boy’ standard. Ficto-critical frameworks and feminine ecriture in relation to practice-led theory are my two favorites…. This ongoing project for voice has and continues to be a long and hard fought for battle, not just for women, but those interested in inclusion of us all, indeed it might well be thought never over, as new voices enter the discussion and are at first always refused by the established order. But it is also one of mischief, and playfulness or gathering and disseminating ideas, or pulling threads together and of stepping back. Within connected communities of thinking, new approaches are critiqued and strengthened. I was glad to be part of the delirious hem forum as yet another example of this.

what does a feminist poet look like?

me playing with ventriloquising ...

new blog multi-MARYfesto

welcome to a new site

A maryfesto is a list inspiring paradigms that shape creative work, be it sonic art, creative knitting, experimental ecriture writing or avant-garde painting practices...this new blog site is the place where every maryfestos written by a self identifying 'mary' is welcome.

Where are the lost maryfestos by all the brilliant mary minds of the past? What is the maryfesto frame women and mary's are working with now?...

Why don't you outline your maryfesto for your creative project, projects, life etc. here, where every single web attached mary can have a look!! after one year this list could/will be compiled and published as the multi-Maryfesto, maryfesto!!!
...and then we will know where the maryfesto's are.

click here

sister act onstage with dolls and sound

20-minute *karaokecore cabaret*_ by sister0 click here

mutant dolls & curiosa embedded with hacked gamepads are played like instruments to divine samples and modify vocals; playful ode to the history of paraphernalia...

'Set on a small makeshift stage reminiscent of early 20thC fun fairs, Nancy appears right at the center of the action dressed in a dress which appears to be composed from as many sources of material as the rest of the stage. Everything seems to have come right from a Mad max movie heavily impregnated with very colorful trash aesthetics. Using the various devices intended to produced audio glitches, she manipulates a set of prerecorded pop songs as well as her own voice live on stage."
Florian Cramer and Anke Arns (2007)

fantasticosa!!!! great stuff!!!