Biopolitical Regimes of Feminism: 1938 – 1968 – 2018
Noit Banai
This lecture explores the shifting Western biopolitical regimes of feminism around three central historicalparadigm shifts: 1938 – 1968 – 2018. Specifically, I argue that at each of these moments, feministpotentialities and impossibilities materialized in relation to particular biopolitical regimes that wereentangled with a constellation of discursive fields, categories of subjectivization, and relations of power.In these seminal years, we can make visible the construction and contestation of gender and itsradical/reactionary limits in the field of modern and contemporary art by considering the experiencesand concepts of exile, humanism, and the global precariat.
Art historian and critic, Noit Banai, is Professor of Contemporary Art in the Department of Art History atthe University of Vienna; Her book on Yves Klein was published in the 'Critical Lives' series by Reaktion inLondon in 2014 and she is currently at work on a book project titled Between Nation State and BorderState: Modernism From Universality to the Global Subject, which examines the aesthetic mediation of'Europe' from the post-war years to the present.
Who is a Revolutionary?
Övül Ö. Durmusoglu
Coloured and white, north and south, we all hear what Audre Lorde means when she says, “The master’stools will never dismantle the master’s house.” When YPJ fighter, Roza Haseke, says, “We, as women,need to break the mentality that controls women. We need to know ourselves, know our agency, ourstrength, we need to protect ourselves,” she is in the same line with Lorde decades later in anothergeography of oppression. “I am a revolutionary,” repeated the Black Panther's Fred Hampton to thecrowds he was addressing in the 1960s. The mode of address has changed drastically in the last fewdecades as the process of subsuming our political and social subjectivities under micro and macrocontrol models brought us to our current deranged predicament. While the taken for granted leftstructures collapse all around the world, it is time to echo Hampton back asking 'Who is arevolutionary?' Beyoncé's populist, feminist and ancestral proposal, for example, may not be fullyconvincing for some. However, it proves to be turning the tables around discourses of ancestry anddecoloniality. The Carters shot their video in the Louvre Museum and Vogue invited its first blackphotographer, Tyler Mitchell, to photograph Beyoncé for its cover. There is and has been a trend fordiversity in fashion and radical chic feeds into this. To be able to fight the trends into a durableinstitutional change, to resist categorisation and stabilisation requires force and volatile thinking, tosurprise the master in an unexpected alliance of images and histories, it is crucial for women to echoeach other across histories and narratives of oppression.
Övül Ö. Durmusoglu is a curator, researcher and writer based in Berlin, currently visiting curator atKunstuniversität Linz. One of the curators for Volksfronten steirischer herbst 2018 edition in Graz; guestprofessor for curatorial theory and praxis in Nuremberg Fine Arts Academy in 2017; artistic director ofthe festival Sofia Contemporary 2013 titled Near, Closer, Together: Exercises for a Common Ground;curated programs for 10th, 13th and 14th Istanbul Biennials; coordinated and organized programs andevents at Maybe Education and Public Programs for dOCUMENTA (13). Curator of A World of TenThousand Things, Pi Artworks Istanbul (2018), Brief Flashes Against A World (Languages of Future),Kunsthal Extra City, Antwerp (2017); The Finger That Shows The Moon Never Moons, Dan Gunn Berlin(2017); Future Queer, ARK Kultur Istanbul (2016).
Workshop
Public Feminisms Forum. Collectively: Thinking, Speaking, Writing
With Anschläge (Lea Susemichel), AUF (Eva Geber, Marietta Schneider), Ona B., Bliss (Marlene Bür-gerkurator Engel), Johanna Braun, Frauenhetz (Birge Krondorfer), Lena Fritsch, Intakt (Stella Bach,Julia Bugram, Susanne Kompast), Kunst und Kind (Vasilena Gankovska, Hansel Sato), Sophie Lingg,Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky Raum (Christine Zwingl), MenstruationsNetzwerk (Valentina Mitterer),Migrationsskizzen (Carla Bobadilla), Miss Balthazar’s Laboratory (Lale Rodgarkia-Dara, StephanieWuschitz), ÖGGF (Romana Hagyo), Iver Ohm, RADS, RitClique (Erica Fischer), Salon Talk (Dudu Kü-cükgöl, Anna Mendelssohn), Juliane Saupe, Basak Senova, Sorority (Sandra Nigischer, MartinaSchöggl), Melinda Tamas, VBKÖ (Stephanie Misa, Ruby Sircar), Wienwoche (Nataša Mackuljak, Iva-na Marjanovic), Wirsindfeige.org (Malu Blume, Ebru Düzgün, Magdalena Fischer, Franziska Kabisch,Sophie Utikal). The workshop is based on texts written by all the contributors. Workshop run byElke Krasny and Claudia Lomoschitz.
Lectures
Birgit Bosold / Vera Hofmann, Concerted Actions: Women*s Year at Schwules Museum Berlin 2018
Katharina Koch, Revolt She Said. Perspectives and Questions on Feminist Art Curating and Anti-Hegemonic Production of His/Herstories
Moderated by Dorothee Richter
Lara Perry, Viewing Women's Work in the Art Museum
Dorothee Richter, Artistic and Curatorial Turns, Care and Accelerated Capitalism. From the Sixtiesto Contemporary Practices in Feminist Perspectives. A Tour de Force