Here and now!
10 Jul - 21 Sep 2008
Erreakzioa-Reacción
HERE AND NOW!
July 10th - September 21st, 2008
Here and now! is proposed as a space for encounter, reflection, debate and resistance around ways of doing that incorporate feminist thought, queer politics and postcolonial discourses in artistic practice. Providing both a show of work and archive and documentary material, the project sets out to offer a broad panorama of this artistic practice through the exhibition of magazines, fanzines, videos and drawings.
Via a device designed by artist Carme Nogueira, The Abstract Cabinet at rekalde will be presenting works by different feminist and queer collectives that have also been involved with the zine format, a medium in which a large number of initiatives have also taken off.
It can be said that in our milieu in recent times there has emerged a greater plurality of proposals, of debate, of complexity and problematisation of discourses on gender and sexuality. This exhibition stands, here and now, as a call to be at the ready, a note of alarm, an invitation to new forms of feminist action.
Erreakzioa-Reacción
This collective, formed by artists Azucena Vieites and Estíbaliz Sádaba, arose in 1994 as a space for carrying out projects between art and feminism. Erreakzioa-Reacción has constituted a pioneering initiative in Spain and is very well known in its field due to the close relations it maintains with other international groups within this movement. Until 2000 a great deal of their effort went into the edition of fanzines, ten all told, this being one of the most representative and emblematic proposals within our output and an activity that best defined their work in relation to the needs of an era. The publications were made with the intention of spreading the reach of feminism, in the awareness that within our milieu a sufficiently consolidated feminist tradition did not exist where artistic practice and criticism were concerned.
So Erreakzioa-Reacción defined a multiple line of work that, among other things, encouraged the translation of texts –at that time very little had been done in this regard–; various women artists were invited to show their work; provision was made to give payment for all collaborations, out of a political determination to remunerate women and artists for their work; social fabric was created; and similar initiatives were presented from other collectives in the rest of Europe and the United States that had in turn constituted a reference point for us when devising the Erreakzioa project.
Going back after time to the publications that were produced, we can confirm that, back then, many of the issues that are currently receiving most input now were already being addressed. Proposals were made for visual collaborations, texts and unpublished translations around questions of post-pornography, male violence, postcolonial feminism, antimilitarism and the refusal to perform military service, music and gender, job precariousness, the means of communication or new corporeal realities.
The first workshops by Erreakzioa-Reacción revolved around questions associated with theory, artistic practice and feminist activism; their main theoretical axis was feminism and its political subject, women, although Erreakzioa was already then problematising and attempting to break with an essentialist or biological idea of the term “woman” and the woman/femininity equation. This clearly highlighted the need to leave spaces for other feminisms that are constructed in tune with new social, political, racial or sexual coordinates.
The normalisation of feminism at present could involve its regularisation, in the sense of the acceptance of one type of feminism –white, heterosexual, middle class, western– and the exclusion of others. In this connection our latest projects were developed at the intersection between a critical feminism and queer politics. The very titles of the proposals executed in this direction –The re-politicisation of sexual space, Mutations of feminism or Femininity problematised– testify to the work carried out.
Erreakzioa-Reacción archive
The project includes an archive on women artists working within the context of the Basque Country and which Erreakzioa-Reacción has set up on the occasion of the show. Because of the open generic nature that this archive aims to have –insomuch as it documents work by women artists from our milieu– we chose to go, not for a selection of works, but for the most exhaustive compilation possible.
However, this archive does not aspire to be totalising or absolute, as it should rather be understood as the opening of a process or a kind of permanent work-in-progress that can continue to be enlarged and taken into consideration by those who are involved in the art system.
DIY, do it yourself
The publications are presented in this show within the parameters of DIY, at the junction between edition, artistic practice, feminisms and collective work. It is about going back to the DIY spirit of punk, making use of genealogies of feminist thought and work created by women from an idea of the collective and of the multi- and inter-disciplinary in art.
The Riot Grrrls movement that appeared in the 1990s within the Anglo-Saxon panorama established itself as a reference: if you don’t like what you see around you, do it yourself; you do not need big infrastructures in order to do something; become an subject instead of a subject of action; question technical virtuosity as a fundamental requisite for shaping a project –musical, artistic, editorial–; question the idea of “professionalism”, of “authority”, use an expressly low-fi aesthetic. It is a matter of continuing with a tradition of generating independent work contexts and spaces that endow women with power.
Groups and types of fanzines included in the show
The exhibition Here and now! also shows work by different feminist groups that have worked with the fanzine format. This is the framework within which Erreakzioa-Reacción have come to be acquainted with diverse initiatives during the last few years and which could now be in this show, as well as others that were a reference point for us as we continued with our work: LTTR, for instance, a collective of genderqueer feminist artists that made its appearance in 2001 in New York and whose emphasis lies in work made out of radical contexts, in representing queer desire and in the production of critical feminism.
Prologue is another initiative we got to know over the same period and that is presented in the shape of magazines and conference encounters, exhibitions, performances, DJ sessions DJ and concerts held in Graz, Austria. The project incorporates work by several authors from Central Europe and Eastern Europe.
As a recent referent we must also mention Malmoe, a Vienna-based magazine that sets out to re-politicise discourses on culture and politics, to connect different realities and social struggles and establish and intervene in emancipatory discourses.
For this project, Erreakzioa-Reacción received the collaboration of groups such as Girls Like Us, a magazine that was created in 2005 as an antidote to saccharine representations of lesbian culture. Where is the humour, the edge, the subversion, the class? The magazine is made in Amsterdam, published in New York and can be found in many of the world’s big cities.
Cuntstunt arose in Vienna and its members are artists. They produced their first number in 2003, marked by a connected feminism with a very DIY approach, for the interchange of materials, ideas, music, collages and drawings. Their interests connect with women’s history and cultural politics. The Riot Grrrls movement is one of their references.
Regina is another magazine art project that Regina Maria Müller has been publishing since 1994. To date eight issues of the journal have been published and number nine is in the making. Regina transforms the female magazine format: it includes the usual sections to be found in this kind of publication (fashion, work, home and garden, cookery recipes, the couple), but the real content reveals how this atmosphere of common familiarity is to do with something else.
Iconoclasistas (Iconoclassists), who hail from Argentina, base their work on a demolition strategy of institutionalised, dominant, hegemonic icons; using counterhegemonic images that render conflicts visible, creating noises, commotion, thought, reflection, with symbolic gestures of protest at the service of the rejection of power. "Iconoclassist" action is associated with a break with a commercial image, instituting a symbolic counterpoint that brings occult messages into view through strategies of rupture.
Mujeres Públicas are also from Argentina. They started to meet up in 2003 out of a need to share a series of reflections and desires, attempting from the outset to tackle the political from a creative perspective, as an alternative to the traditional forms of political manifestation. The scenario for their actions is the street and they make use of artistic practice as a strategy.
Elke Zobl has been running Grrrl Zine Network, a platform for femzines, since 2001. Work for this web space consists of connecting and offering a list of femzines from all over the world. The initiative took off when Elke Zobl was searching for feminist zines on the Internet. In addition, Elke Zobl forms part of Grrrl Zines a Go Go in San Diego, California, a feminist group that has organised workshops to empower girls and young women.
In a more local context for us, we can point to initiatives such as O.R.G.I.A. – “Reversible Organisation of Intermediate and Artistic Genders”–, which introduces itself as an interdisciplinary collective that, since 2001, has been developing investigative and artistic work around sexual and identity politics from transversal stances. Or Belcro, which has just produced its first publication, and began as an editorial project in which there is collaboration from all kinds of artists from the fields of art, design, architecture, photography or illustration. In the first issue there was a convergence of different approaches and projects associated with urban and human interaction.
Artísimas is a collection of feminist artists who coincide in the need to question an established order within which they simply cannot recognise themselves. They believe in the need to base themselves on feminist discourses to analyse a reality as women and to recognise the mediums used by the patriarchal system. The group began in Bilbao and opts for art as a tool with which to intervene in society from a critical posture.
The Tomboi project is another Bilbao project, as a space that sets out to get something different going in terms of nightlife and parties for young women, with an emphasis on fun and excitement and not just on events where business and the commercial side set the pace. In Tomboi there are no quality controls, it is a place for socialising, getting to know people, creating an atmosphere and changing the scenery. They put on meetings and have an unusual events schedule.
Pripublikarrak saw the light of day as an interdisciplinary collective and as a proposal seeking to analyse the possibilities of the arts and feminisms as vehicles for taking a critical look at society. As they themselves say, their interest concentrates on gender analysis through representations in the social and political contexts they are involved in.
All these proposals share a collective working practice, via contexts of art and activism, which generate spaces of debate and exploration, for the empowerment of women, and they invite us to share and drive new forms of feminist action. HERE AND NOW!
Activities corresponding to this exhibition
On the occasion of the show Here and now!, the following activities will take place:
Thursday, 10 July, at 20:30: opening
Musical performance by the group A duras penas (Hernani, Gipuzkoa, Basque Country)
In September, as part of the exhibition, a series of conferences and round tables will take place, in which various collectives will take part in order to contextualise feminist artistic practice in the Basque sphere. Artísimas, Pripublikarrak, Wiki-historias and Tomboi will present their works and explore the art / feminism equation. In addition, Carmen Mörsch, director of the IAE –Institute for Art Education– of Zúrich and also director of the Education Department for Documenta XII, will talk about the role of feminism in education and art. Elke Zobl, meanwhile, will examine Internet femzine forums and platforms. These activities will take place on the following dates:
Wednesday, 10 September, at 18:00:
Conference given by Carmen Mörsch
Presentations of Artísimas and Pripublikarrak
The event will be chaired by artists Estíbaliz Sádaba y Azucena Vieites, from the collective Erreakzioa-Reacción
Thursday, 11 September, at 18:00:
Conference given by Elke Zobl, with an introduction provided by Erreakzioa-Reacción
Presentations of Wiki-historias and Tomboi
HERE AND NOW!
July 10th - September 21st, 2008
Here and now! is proposed as a space for encounter, reflection, debate and resistance around ways of doing that incorporate feminist thought, queer politics and postcolonial discourses in artistic practice. Providing both a show of work and archive and documentary material, the project sets out to offer a broad panorama of this artistic practice through the exhibition of magazines, fanzines, videos and drawings.
Via a device designed by artist Carme Nogueira, The Abstract Cabinet at rekalde will be presenting works by different feminist and queer collectives that have also been involved with the zine format, a medium in which a large number of initiatives have also taken off.
It can be said that in our milieu in recent times there has emerged a greater plurality of proposals, of debate, of complexity and problematisation of discourses on gender and sexuality. This exhibition stands, here and now, as a call to be at the ready, a note of alarm, an invitation to new forms of feminist action.
Erreakzioa-Reacción
This collective, formed by artists Azucena Vieites and Estíbaliz Sádaba, arose in 1994 as a space for carrying out projects between art and feminism. Erreakzioa-Reacción has constituted a pioneering initiative in Spain and is very well known in its field due to the close relations it maintains with other international groups within this movement. Until 2000 a great deal of their effort went into the edition of fanzines, ten all told, this being one of the most representative and emblematic proposals within our output and an activity that best defined their work in relation to the needs of an era. The publications were made with the intention of spreading the reach of feminism, in the awareness that within our milieu a sufficiently consolidated feminist tradition did not exist where artistic practice and criticism were concerned.
So Erreakzioa-Reacción defined a multiple line of work that, among other things, encouraged the translation of texts –at that time very little had been done in this regard–; various women artists were invited to show their work; provision was made to give payment for all collaborations, out of a political determination to remunerate women and artists for their work; social fabric was created; and similar initiatives were presented from other collectives in the rest of Europe and the United States that had in turn constituted a reference point for us when devising the Erreakzioa project.
Going back after time to the publications that were produced, we can confirm that, back then, many of the issues that are currently receiving most input now were already being addressed. Proposals were made for visual collaborations, texts and unpublished translations around questions of post-pornography, male violence, postcolonial feminism, antimilitarism and the refusal to perform military service, music and gender, job precariousness, the means of communication or new corporeal realities.
The first workshops by Erreakzioa-Reacción revolved around questions associated with theory, artistic practice and feminist activism; their main theoretical axis was feminism and its political subject, women, although Erreakzioa was already then problematising and attempting to break with an essentialist or biological idea of the term “woman” and the woman/femininity equation. This clearly highlighted the need to leave spaces for other feminisms that are constructed in tune with new social, political, racial or sexual coordinates.
The normalisation of feminism at present could involve its regularisation, in the sense of the acceptance of one type of feminism –white, heterosexual, middle class, western– and the exclusion of others. In this connection our latest projects were developed at the intersection between a critical feminism and queer politics. The very titles of the proposals executed in this direction –The re-politicisation of sexual space, Mutations of feminism or Femininity problematised– testify to the work carried out.
Erreakzioa-Reacción archive
The project includes an archive on women artists working within the context of the Basque Country and which Erreakzioa-Reacción has set up on the occasion of the show. Because of the open generic nature that this archive aims to have –insomuch as it documents work by women artists from our milieu– we chose to go, not for a selection of works, but for the most exhaustive compilation possible.
However, this archive does not aspire to be totalising or absolute, as it should rather be understood as the opening of a process or a kind of permanent work-in-progress that can continue to be enlarged and taken into consideration by those who are involved in the art system.
DIY, do it yourself
The publications are presented in this show within the parameters of DIY, at the junction between edition, artistic practice, feminisms and collective work. It is about going back to the DIY spirit of punk, making use of genealogies of feminist thought and work created by women from an idea of the collective and of the multi- and inter-disciplinary in art.
The Riot Grrrls movement that appeared in the 1990s within the Anglo-Saxon panorama established itself as a reference: if you don’t like what you see around you, do it yourself; you do not need big infrastructures in order to do something; become an subject instead of a subject of action; question technical virtuosity as a fundamental requisite for shaping a project –musical, artistic, editorial–; question the idea of “professionalism”, of “authority”, use an expressly low-fi aesthetic. It is a matter of continuing with a tradition of generating independent work contexts and spaces that endow women with power.
Groups and types of fanzines included in the show
The exhibition Here and now! also shows work by different feminist groups that have worked with the fanzine format. This is the framework within which Erreakzioa-Reacción have come to be acquainted with diverse initiatives during the last few years and which could now be in this show, as well as others that were a reference point for us as we continued with our work: LTTR, for instance, a collective of genderqueer feminist artists that made its appearance in 2001 in New York and whose emphasis lies in work made out of radical contexts, in representing queer desire and in the production of critical feminism.
Prologue is another initiative we got to know over the same period and that is presented in the shape of magazines and conference encounters, exhibitions, performances, DJ sessions DJ and concerts held in Graz, Austria. The project incorporates work by several authors from Central Europe and Eastern Europe.
As a recent referent we must also mention Malmoe, a Vienna-based magazine that sets out to re-politicise discourses on culture and politics, to connect different realities and social struggles and establish and intervene in emancipatory discourses.
For this project, Erreakzioa-Reacción received the collaboration of groups such as Girls Like Us, a magazine that was created in 2005 as an antidote to saccharine representations of lesbian culture. Where is the humour, the edge, the subversion, the class? The magazine is made in Amsterdam, published in New York and can be found in many of the world’s big cities.
Cuntstunt arose in Vienna and its members are artists. They produced their first number in 2003, marked by a connected feminism with a very DIY approach, for the interchange of materials, ideas, music, collages and drawings. Their interests connect with women’s history and cultural politics. The Riot Grrrls movement is one of their references.
Regina is another magazine art project that Regina Maria Müller has been publishing since 1994. To date eight issues of the journal have been published and number nine is in the making. Regina transforms the female magazine format: it includes the usual sections to be found in this kind of publication (fashion, work, home and garden, cookery recipes, the couple), but the real content reveals how this atmosphere of common familiarity is to do with something else.
Iconoclasistas (Iconoclassists), who hail from Argentina, base their work on a demolition strategy of institutionalised, dominant, hegemonic icons; using counterhegemonic images that render conflicts visible, creating noises, commotion, thought, reflection, with symbolic gestures of protest at the service of the rejection of power. "Iconoclassist" action is associated with a break with a commercial image, instituting a symbolic counterpoint that brings occult messages into view through strategies of rupture.
Mujeres Públicas are also from Argentina. They started to meet up in 2003 out of a need to share a series of reflections and desires, attempting from the outset to tackle the political from a creative perspective, as an alternative to the traditional forms of political manifestation. The scenario for their actions is the street and they make use of artistic practice as a strategy.
Elke Zobl has been running Grrrl Zine Network, a platform for femzines, since 2001. Work for this web space consists of connecting and offering a list of femzines from all over the world. The initiative took off when Elke Zobl was searching for feminist zines on the Internet. In addition, Elke Zobl forms part of Grrrl Zines a Go Go in San Diego, California, a feminist group that has organised workshops to empower girls and young women.
In a more local context for us, we can point to initiatives such as O.R.G.I.A. – “Reversible Organisation of Intermediate and Artistic Genders”–, which introduces itself as an interdisciplinary collective that, since 2001, has been developing investigative and artistic work around sexual and identity politics from transversal stances. Or Belcro, which has just produced its first publication, and began as an editorial project in which there is collaboration from all kinds of artists from the fields of art, design, architecture, photography or illustration. In the first issue there was a convergence of different approaches and projects associated with urban and human interaction.
Artísimas is a collection of feminist artists who coincide in the need to question an established order within which they simply cannot recognise themselves. They believe in the need to base themselves on feminist discourses to analyse a reality as women and to recognise the mediums used by the patriarchal system. The group began in Bilbao and opts for art as a tool with which to intervene in society from a critical posture.
The Tomboi project is another Bilbao project, as a space that sets out to get something different going in terms of nightlife and parties for young women, with an emphasis on fun and excitement and not just on events where business and the commercial side set the pace. In Tomboi there are no quality controls, it is a place for socialising, getting to know people, creating an atmosphere and changing the scenery. They put on meetings and have an unusual events schedule.
Pripublikarrak saw the light of day as an interdisciplinary collective and as a proposal seeking to analyse the possibilities of the arts and feminisms as vehicles for taking a critical look at society. As they themselves say, their interest concentrates on gender analysis through representations in the social and political contexts they are involved in.
All these proposals share a collective working practice, via contexts of art and activism, which generate spaces of debate and exploration, for the empowerment of women, and they invite us to share and drive new forms of feminist action. HERE AND NOW!
Activities corresponding to this exhibition
On the occasion of the show Here and now!, the following activities will take place:
Thursday, 10 July, at 20:30: opening
Musical performance by the group A duras penas (Hernani, Gipuzkoa, Basque Country)
In September, as part of the exhibition, a series of conferences and round tables will take place, in which various collectives will take part in order to contextualise feminist artistic practice in the Basque sphere. Artísimas, Pripublikarrak, Wiki-historias and Tomboi will present their works and explore the art / feminism equation. In addition, Carmen Mörsch, director of the IAE –Institute for Art Education– of Zúrich and also director of the Education Department for Documenta XII, will talk about the role of feminism in education and art. Elke Zobl, meanwhile, will examine Internet femzine forums and platforms. These activities will take place on the following dates:
Wednesday, 10 September, at 18:00:
Conference given by Carmen Mörsch
Presentations of Artísimas and Pripublikarrak
The event will be chaired by artists Estíbaliz Sádaba y Azucena Vieites, from the collective Erreakzioa-Reacción
Thursday, 11 September, at 18:00:
Conference given by Elke Zobl, with an introduction provided by Erreakzioa-Reacción
Presentations of Wiki-historias and Tomboi