THE EXCLUSIVITY AND THE POPULARISATION OF THE CITY OF WOMEN
City of Women has been labelled exclusive and limited to a small circle of people with which a larger number of men and women cannot identify. Some find it the realm of a too specific art, others are not pleased with its specific conceptual orientation, which stems from challenging gender inequality.
The reproach of exclusivity was most obvious last year, when we opened up to
feminisms. The organisers historicised the word feminism and understood it as an idea —as well as a civil movement— based on the knowledge that proves that women have been oppressed throughout history, that we live in a society that disregards the equality of men, women and children. At the same time, feminism meant the discovery of women’s power and creativity.
When Judy Chicago began making her well known installation The Dinner Party —which later became a symbol of feminist art— she once went to her mentor Anaïs Nin troubled by fear, saying she had the feeling that unusual and contradictory changes were happening inside of her. Anaïs Nin replied that she had finally allowed herself to express her power as an artist, but various forces remained to fight inside her, because she had incorporated the dominating idea that this kind of power was negative for a woman. Precisely because of the same feeling, many women stopped half way and did not fully realise their creative power. It is not that they were not talented enough. They simply did not allow themselves to fully express their potential, because they had learned that women’s power is destructive.
Although most people would agree with this definition of feminism, most men and women cannot identify with the label applied to feminism. Some cannot identify with it because the word is stigmatised; some women do not have enough courage to endure the negative responses or even scorn; others are convinced that gender inequality is no longer a problem, or even that it has never been one.
Therefore some women —who otherwise love to come to the shows at the City of Women— firmly declare that they have nothing to do with feminism. These kinds of statements have become so frequent that they have reached the level of a ritual chant. People expect them and pigeon-hole the person who says it. Does this declaration mean that the person opposes gender equality and the fact that it is unjust that the world’s museums are packed with paintings by male artists? Maybe she wants to say that she stands for better opportunities for women, but her involvement will not go so far as to threaten existing power relationships. Maybe she has the following unconscious thoughts: “What will happen to my values, if hers prevail? Are my values still right and a norm? If her values are equal to mine, do I not lose my privileges, which I’ve taken for granted and were given to me by my values?”
The consequences of such a declaration may be useful to those who express those repetitive statements, but definitely not for other women. Considering the social structure, these kinds of statements are negative. Because by keeping the status quo, historically rooted processes — such as, the low participation of women in all important social spheres (science, politics, research, culture), family violence, sexual harassment and discrimination of women seeking employment — continue.
We believe that those men and women who have greater access to the public sphere — be it art or politics — bear a greater historical responsibility than those who are not part of the public sphere. Historical responsibility increases during the political and cultural changes we are witnessing today. In such times, it is very important what people say, or do not say. If men and women strive for equality, then they must recognise that — historically speaking — feminism has been one of the forms of fighting to reach that goal. Therefore, those who cannot be part of the solution, should at least not become part of the problem. Since every person can fight against inequality in her or his own field, the City of Women must be understood as a pattern in the mosaic. It encourages women’s art and reminds us of the low visibility of women in the arts.
So that men and women will be able to deal more pleasantly with these questions and reflect upon them, the theme of this year’s festival is Images of Women between Past, Present and Future. It is not about feminism as a too vague identity for some, and a too rigid one for others, but about discovering the changing images of oneself and one’s multiplicity. Therefore, the theme of the City of Women is not exclusive, but popular. It includes everything and everyone, such as the theme of families and their various transformations.
Families were once large and unified, later they became smaller. They expanded from time to time, but became more fragmented throughout the world. In them lived people of different or same sexes and of various age groups. At first, the same people accompanied a person from birth to death. Later on, people lived in two different families in their life span. Nowadays, they swap families as well as family forms. Just as there is not one feminism, there is not one family. It used to be crucial that families were economically stable units that took care of the individual. Nowadays it is more important that they provide safety and pleasure; that the family is a place where people care for one another. A family consists of either ten, four or two members, the one with his/her multiple self. Each member needs something else and has his/her own desires. According to these needs and desires people construct families. A family is not a predetermined fact, it is a creation. Like the City of Women, the family is also a place of women. How the family became a place for women, and how it ceased to be that, we will discover in Images of Women from the Past, Present and Future.
The stories of women artists are personal. Different selves are voiced in them. At the same time, they are embodied stories, since the body not only contains spoken, but also silent stories. If not every person can be a feminist, she or he can be the family. The experience of feminism is barred to many women and men, but everyone experiences a certain form of family. Julia Kristeva once said that we have as many feminisms as there are women who define them. In the case of families, the situation is even more complex. They are as diverse as the women, men, and children who speak of them. But let us not be naive; what we wrote is at least as vicious, dangerous and strange as feminisms are. But this is the way it is supposed to be. Good art is always ahead of its own time.
Darja Zaviršek
President of the Association for the Promotion of Women in Culture - City of Women
LET'S BURN FEMINISM!
Images of Women. Past, present, future. It's with this theme in mind that we began making the programme of the 6th International Festival of Contemporary Arts CITY OF WOMEN. Year after year City of Women has been about breaking stereotypes, stubborn stereotypes about women in the arts. Through the work of hundreds of artists, theoreticians and academics from around the world, City of Women time and again stood --and stands-- for differences of opinion and diversity in articulation. While stressing this diversity of faces and voices, City of Women indirectly points at the discriminatory mechanisms at work when evaluating, producing, distributing, and representing women in the arts. But no matter how many times the festival has demonstrated that it is not only impossible, but also ridiculous to reduce this enormous diversity and multiplicity to one common denominator, there have always been persistent opinions who tried to belittle the City of Women by labelling it a ghetto. No matter how many times City of Women has repeated that there is only one thing women in the arts have in common – that they are treated differently from men – conservatives conveniently diverted attention away from this basic injustice by stigmatising the festival and the work presented as One. City of Women is not One, never was One, and will never be One.
Delta-editor Eva Bahovec writes in her introduction to the presentation of the Slovene translation of Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex, "Between the man who writes, and the woman who writes, there is no symmetry, no reciprocity – and also no equality. A man is first of all a man,
i. e. in the medium of the universal; the woman is first of all a woman, to be differentiated from the man." And, quoting de Beauvoir, woman "is defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to her; she is the incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential. He is the Subject, he is the Absolute – she is the Other".
Having the words from this milestone publication in mind, it doesn't come as a surprise that – after five years of relative acceptance of the concept of the festival -- we were again able to collect some very passionate oppositional reactions to the 5th edition of City of Women. Emotions erupted on seeing the catalogue cover depicting a fat woman dressed in underwear, sitting on a bed, smoking a cigarette, "provocatively" looking in the direction of the spectator. She was obviously the radical Other. The One we could, and certainly never would, identify with. The One who evokes only repulsion. This real flesh and blood woman documented on this fascinating and complex painting, was immediately reduced to one image. An image that stood for the abject, the ugly. Even "sympathisers" couldn't swallow the picture. Some even felt offended. The whole incident (the deliberate misreading or even refusal to consider another interpretation of this painting) illustrates to what extent uniform and stereotypical images dominate our imaginations.
Of course, we could have put "beautiful pictures" of "beautiful women" on the cover, but – as Duba Sambolec wonders – "if 'beauty is truth', what happens if the truth is ugliness, lies, corruption?” Or as Rosi Braidotti has remarked, the culture of the abject is one of the mainstream forms of contemporary culture. If so, why can men practice and celebrate this form of culture, whereas women who do the same are at once rejected as "ghetto women’s art".
City of Women 2000 looks at pictures, pictures from the past and the present, visions of the future. We'll leaf through the family albums of Virginia Woolf. On our daily walks through Ljubljana city centre we'll be puzzled by Duba Sambolec's "home" videos. We'll discover the thoughts of one of the 20th century's most quoted – but least read -- feminist authors, Simone de Beauvoir. We'll look at vaginas of different courses of life in a way we never have. We'll admire and re-read femmes fatales like Louise Brooks. Vera Mantero will bring to life Manet's impressionist painting Olympia, and show us the reverse angle of the sexy banana-dancing Josephine Baker of the Gay Twenties. The elderly opera-singer Marie-Thérèse Escribano will also evoke the Interbellum with ironic versions of period-"Schlagers". For the first time at the City of Women we'll see drawn images of women at the exhibition of Helena Klakočar. The duo Haohio will transport us to hectic urban Japan with their avant-pop concert. In the year that the first ever feature film directed by a Slovene woman is being edited, we'll be able to see a comprehensive overview of Slovene women-directed short films, documentaries and video-art (including several world-premieres). In her concert, the Greek Savina Yannatou will reunite the centuries old cultural links of the Mediterranean. Suzana Koncut will scan the surface of her body. The always naively witty Swiss Reines Prochaines will takes us back to prehistory.…
So, you want to label all of these images with one term?
Last year Rosi Braidotti reminded us (in her inspiring lecture at the Feminism/S for Beginners panel) of Virginia Woolf's book The Three Guineas. "She has that famous passage where she says what an ugly word feminism is. Everybody hates it. Everybody associates it with the most disgusting things. So, I tell you: Let's burn it! Let's get rid of it! Let's light a holy fire and we burn the word feminism. We just sacrifice it. And when the fire is out and the smoke settles, what do we see? We see simply an agenda point. We see a concrete aspiration to dignity, to justice, to a better way to live. Call it what you want, so long as you have the agenda in mind, so long as you keep that aspiration in mind."