FEMMES ‘R’ US / FEMINISM IN POP MUSIC ART FILM TODAY / BERLIN, 7 – 16 AUGUST 2008 /RADIALSYSTEM V
The project FEMMES 'R' US is dedicated to contemporary feminist positions in the arts. A ten days exhibition, accompanied by lectures, discussions, film screenings, artistic performances and musical events, demonstrates that feminism and feminist critique play a crucial role in contemporary art and cultural production.
FEMMES 'R' US develops from the work of the Berlin project FEMMES WITH FATAL BREAKS - an all female DJ-MC-network, whose members Ina Wudtke und Christine Lang curated this interdisciplinary program. The project is supported by the Capital Cultural Fund.
FEMINISM IN POP-MUSIC-ART-FILM TODAY
Last year the exhibition WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution, shown at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art and at P.S.1 in New York, as well as the newly opened Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art in the Brooklyn Museum, honored feminist art by historicizing and by museifing it and thereby giving it a place in the canon of art history.
This leads to the question, whether feminist art is a closed chapter. That was also the impression given by the latest Documenta, which situated feminist positions exclusively in the 70s and 80s. Behind this historicisation of feminism lies the danger of its renewed marginalisation. Contemporary feminist art productions are excluded from the art market, in which women are still underrepresented.
In film theory, similar reflections have been made of lately: in the last volume of the feminist journal Frauen und Film it is stated that feminism is just another historic category and that critique can no longer orient practice by giving clear directions. This is not the only place where feminist critique seems to quit and to dissolve into globalisation critique.
The project FEMMES 'R' US is intended as a reply to this elegy. It will attempt to deal publicly with the feminist discourses that still today determine art and cultural productions in heterogeneous ways and to make their virulence visible, contrary to the general tendency of their historicisation. The programm establishes diverse links between theory, art, film and club culture and produces interdisciplinary contexts. By doing so, FEMMES 'R' US makes the cultural work of women visible, it also criticizes the male codification and canonisation of art, film and music history and moreover brings feminist theory from the relatively secluded world of academia into the public debate and cultural life of Berlin.
ART
The core of the FEMMES ‘R’ US project is a ten days exhibition, around which a theory and a film program, as well as musical performances, are scheduled. The exhibition in the Foyer, Studio B, C and in the Kubus of the Radialsystem shows works by Pauline Boudry (Berlin), Sonia Boyce (London), Patty Chang (New York), Antye Greie (Hailuoto / Berlin), Klub Zwei (Jo Schmeiser / Simone Bader, Wien), Christine Lang (Berlin), Jill Magid (New York), Elke Mark (K˚ln), NEID (Berlin), Pipilotti Rist (Zurich), Ina Wudtke (Berlin) a.o.
Pauline Boudry’s A Street Angel With A Cowboy Mouth is a tour diary of her queer band Rhythm King and Her Friends, in which she reflects on the music business from the perspective of the female artist. In her work Devotional Series the London based artist Sonia Boyce celebrates and eternalises black female performers in the British music scene. Two hundred names with outline drawings are printed on wall papers. In her work Lobby 7, the New York artist Jill Magid makes use of performative femininity in order to appropriate ubiquitous surveillance technologies. In her video Melons (at a Loss), the New York performance artist Patty Chang plays with her body in a provocative and sexual way, putting aspects of seventies performance art into a contemporary perspective. Antye Greie will be represented with her audio installation Presswehen, an aestheticisation of bearing-down pains. Klub Zwei are two Viennese artists Jo Schmeiser and Simone Bader. Their work Ambivalenzen: Auseinandersetzungen der Töchter mit der Nazivergangenheit ihrer Väter is an investigation into the relevance and effects of the nazi regime until the present day. The new music video Quio: (Grow Together) Rising Tide by Christine Lang presents the reversal of gender relationships as obvious and plays with hip hop culture and film tricks. With her sculpture Tracht I / Karodame, the Cologne based artist Elke Mark refers to feminist art techniques and works of the 70s. In the 90s, the artists magazine and project NEID shaped the debate on gender issues in the art context. The magazines, discs, CDs, videos and t-shirts which the project produced since 1992 will be on display. Significant artist Pipilotti Rist will be part of the show with an earlier work. The 1990 video You Called Me Jacky ironically reflects on the aesthetics of popular culture. In her new video herspace, Ina Wudtke will perform diverse roles of female DJs, critically questioning their working conditions. The video is a blue print for independent female workers on the free market.
THEORY
At the beginning of FEMMES ‘R’ US, a general theoretic discussion will give some orientation and insight in the contemporary gender debate. A debate with Maria do Mar Castro Varela (Berlin), Chris Straayer (New York), Marina Grzinic (Ljubljana / Vienna), Rosa Reitsamer (Vienna), Tim Stttgen (Hamburg), Tiina Rosenberg (New York), moderated by Antke Engel of the Institut für Queer Theory, will perform and discuss how complicated gender relations have become. Among others the fact will be discussed that today feminism has to deal with more then two sexes. The introduction to the film section of FEMMES ‘R’ US will be presented by theoretician Michaela Wünsch (Berlin). She will introduce the different perspectives and contemporary positions have been formulated diverse concepts of representation, sexual difference and film reception.
FILM
Viennese artist Constanze Ruhm works on the cross roads between film and art. In a conversation with the art historian Sabeth Buchmann, she will address the question whether an artwork can be feminist at all. - A panel will discuss feminism through the generations: the movie 9 Leben hat die Katze from 1969 is considered to be one of the first German feminist films. After a screening of the film in the exhibition, there will be a debate with its director Ula Stöckl, Helke Misselwitz and Birgit Großkopf on feminism and film, on historical changes and production conditions. - A short film program with new work of women on the theme Women At Work will enable a view on global relations. - The film program will be concluded by film director Daniela Abke’s presentation of fragments from the work of Alice Guy, the first female film author in history, on which Abke is currently doing research for a new film project. Aim is to correct film history and to demonstrate to what extent early films were open for strong female figures and atypical role images.
MUSIC
A music program will accompany the exhibition. Its spectrum goes from dubstep- lounge for the opening over a DJ-Set of Rhythm King and Her Friends, a two days Ableton music software workshop with the famous Berlin DJ Aroma, a workshop about audio mastering with the famous Stefan Betke, to a climax with the big FEMMES 'R' US Party, starring „Breakbeat Queen“ Flore from Lyon, MC Chickaboo from London and DJ Ravissa from Vienna - supported by the DJ- and MC-Team Femmes With Fatal Breaks. - At the finissage, DJ Swingin’ Swanee will give a lecture on Women in Swing & Blues, before DJ T-Ina Darling & Friends will invite to dance on the Deck.
RADIALSYSTEM V
Holzmarktstr. 33
10243 Berlin
www.radialsystem.de
