Rdeče Zore (Red Dawns)

Rdeče Zore is an international feminist and queer festival, which has been taking place for the last 20 years in the days around March 8. It is marked by a wide selection of artistic and activist events, including lectures, performances, exhibitions, musical performances, and other forms of public expression. 

The festival began in 2000, when the initiators decided to organise a festival on International Women’s Day, 8 March, which would open the public space for gathering and expression of women on the non-hierarchical, non-exploitational, and anti-capitalistic foundation. They derived from the fact that at Metelkova women performed the larger part of the creative and organisational yet invisible work which forms the basis for the operation of such a large autonomous cultural centre. The festival continues to work non-hierarchically, mostly voluntarily and with a DIY (do it yourself) approach, by which it gives the room to the most diverse feminist artistic and activist practices. 

The recurrent theme connecting the exchanging members of the Red Dawns programme committee through the years is the examination of the position of women in the inseparable network of art, culture, politics, activism, and everyday life. They do not burden themselves with the search for women’s “essence” and the obscuring the view on current problems by determining common biological or even character traits of women, but rather focus their attention on everyday underestimation and exploitation of women and men in the neoliberal patriarchal society.

Even though autonomous spaces where such festivals can be held gradually keep disappearing, Red Dawns does not give in and is planning this year’s on-line edition of the festival.