This conversation with Stéphanie Dadour evolves around her doctoral dissertation that studies architectural theory and practice in the end of 20th-century North America. We explore a particular chapter of this dissertation to continue a series started with Olivia Ahn and Karen Tongson, about the gendered spatial paradigm constituted by the American suburbia. Citing the works of Mary McLeod, Beatriz Colomina, Joel Sanders and other feminist/queer thinkers and architects, we address architectural elements proper to this paradigm, such as the lawn, the curtain, or the window as instances of gendered apparatuses. We conclude the conversation by examining anthropometric studies, as well ...

In this text, Maite Garbayo-Maeztu seeks to think some of the first performances taking place in the 1970s in Spain, along with occupations of the street by feminist activism at the time. Artists like Dorothèe Selz, Fina Miralles, Àngels Ribé and Olga L. Pijoan would use veils, occultations and alterations that invited viewers to go beyond visuality.

In ten seconds, how many synonyms can you think of for the word “power”? And then, just when you thought that you finally got the hang of how the power structures around you function, they seem to be coming undone. But are they really coming undone, or is the current that’s pushing and pulling at them not much more than a massage, a way to keep them up to date that stays only on the surface and is not able to touch the center. What is feminism, precisely? What are feminisms today? To answer these questions and myriad others, the next two issues ...

Previously in e-flux journal, we asked: In ten seconds, how many synonyms can you think of for the word “power”? And then, just when you thought that you finally got the hang of how the power structures around you function, they seem to be coming undone … What is feminism, precisely? What are feminisms today? To examine these questions and myriad others, the previous and present issues of e-flux journal have been dedicated to feminism(s). It has been a particular pleasure to embark on an exploration and an unfolding of the many complex realities and iterations that feminisms can accommodate. Not one feminism, ...

This conversation with Sara Farris was recorded on August 7, 2017 to be featured as a transcript in the 13th issue of The Funambulist Magazine (Sept-Oct. 2017), Queers, Feminists & Interiors. It attempts to link the work she presents in her book, In the Name of Women’s Rights: The Rise of Femonationalism (Duke University Press, 2017) with the violence against women that femonationalist discourses deliberately ignore (as these violences are exercised through what we could call “a universalist patriarchy”): domestic violence. The conversation first presents the political concept of femonationalism in the context of Europe, and then proceeds to describe the several dimensions ...

It’s been a rough news week. Between Thursday’s testimonies of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and Judge Brett Kavanaugh before the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Kavanaugh’s near appointment to the Supreme Court Friday, many of us are exhausted. We would like a win for women. Sometimes the quickest way to achieve that is to do it yourself. As such, this episode of Explain Me celebrates women who have made waves in the world of art and activism, through a series of interviews with four major figures—Mia Pearlman (Make NY True Blue), Jenny Dubnau (ASAP), Nancy Kleaver (PARADE), and Mira Schor (Selected writing). In the first half of ...

Episode 4: Fear Selina Grüter & Michèle Graf, Miriam Laura Leonardi, Hannah Weinberger in conversation with Chus Martínez and Quinn Latimer. Promise No Promises is a podcasts series produced by the Women’s Center for Excellence, a research project between the Art Institute and the Instituto Susch—a joint venture with Grażyna Kulczyk and Art Stations Foundation CH. The Women’s Center for Excellence is conceived as a think tank tasked to assess, develop, and propose new social languages and methods to understand the role of women in the arts, culture, science, and technology, as well as in all knowledge areas that are interconnected with the field ...

In this conversation, Mimi Zeiger and I examine a problem internal to the architectural world, yet that can be found in various forms in other disciplines. The “politics of simulacra” consists in a discursive use of consensual notions to describe practices that do not fully engage with the problems that they claim to address. In this regard, curating exhibitions or publications celebrating “women in architecture” often falls short of making a deep feminist argument. Similarly, the recent sum of energy spent around questions of “participation,” “openness,” “horizontality,” are interesting in what they suggest but too often do not make the ...

The importance of women’s rights have sprung up in movements across the globe in the past few years, exacerbated by increasing social, environmental, technological and political polarities. Feminisms is the sixth in a series of online publications published by L’Internationale Online. This publication examines how women, or those who identify as female have been addressing not only inequalities – in reproductive rights, sexual rights, and in the right to equal pay – but also how plural feminisms have been and are being consistently re-thought, and how art museums can work with and respond to issues surrounding women’s rights. Feminisms play a crucial ...

Episode 2: Gossip Camille Aleña, Stefanie Hessler, Elise Lammer, Nora Berman (from the audience) in conversation with Chus Martínez and Quinn Latimer. Promise No Promises is a podcasts series produced by the Women’s Center for Excellence, a research project between the Art Institute and the Instituto Susch—a joint venture with Grażyna Kulczyk and Art Stations Foundation CH. The Women’s Center for Excellence is conceived as a think tank tasked to assess, develop, and propose new social languages and methods to understand the role of women in the arts, culture, science, and technology, as well as in all knowledge areas that are interconnected with the ...

The Taylorist tools of our modern homes, from the lawnmower to the microwave, are engineered for solo users. These tools complement our growth-oriented consumerist culture and gendered performance of the nuclear family. Honey I’m Home! questions domestic rituals by altering the props which support them. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP), for example, is a fictional, provocative prototype for collectivising domestic labour. As an alternative to the capitalist assumption that housework is most efficient when performed individually, the GDP is a device best used by three people.

Feminist Pedagogies Working Group The work group was triggered by the desire to articulate and create space for a queer and feminist perspective on learning and teaching inside and outside of the art academy. It builds on and responds to the Critical Practices: Education from Arts and Artists Conference at Valand Academy (October 2015) and the Meaning Making Meaning exhibition at A-venue (March 2016) in Gothenburg. All students and staff at Valand Academy were invited to join this open work group. Over the past year we held lunchtime meetings, dinners at homes, met in bars or over skype, in our studios and ...

Anicka discusses with gallerist Stefania Bortolami, collector Cristina Delgado, curator Ruba Katrib, critic Andrew Russeth, and artist Amy Sillman the viability of female networks and bottom-line economics for women in the contemporary-art world. First of a three-part series.

A new episode on the viabilities of female networks with a discussion between Juliana Huxtable, Park McArthur, Keren Cytter, Rebecca Quaytman and Rachel Harrison. We discuss gendered formalism, entitlement and much more…

For this episode of our Criticism in Conversation series, a writer and collaborative performer, Jacob Wren, speaks with artist Dayna Danger, about the line between empowerment and objectification and the meaning of community in both their work. Danger is a 2Spirit/Queer, Metis/Saulteaux/Polish artist whose images highlight and queer power dynamics, kinship, representation, and sexuality. Wren makes collaborative performances, exhibitions and literature, including 2014’s Polyamorous Love Song and this year’s Authenticity is a Feeling, a hybrid of history, performance theory, and memoir. Together they cover a lot of ground, from personal narratives and community relationships to speaking against silence and apathy. We also ...

Episode 8: Networks This episode is based on the Symposium on feminism, witches, art and pedagogy, around the exhibition of Doris Stauffer at Centre culturel Suisse in Paris in April 2019. The guests speakers are Bice Curiger, Mara Züst and Simone Koller, moderated by Claire Hoffmann.

Although the history of photography and the history of photo and artists’ books is widely documented, collected, exhibited, and discussed, the legacy of women using photography in print is underdocumented, cursory, fragmentary and too often, inaccurate. Women were always at the forefront of innovation and the political debate on photography, despite the harsh conditions in which they often lived and worked, but their voices and their historical contribution are still marginalised. As the feminist art historian Linda Nochlin asked, what are the implications of this rejection and what elements of these practices do we need to reevaluate? And why does ...

Episode 9: Reenactment This episode is based on the Symposium on feminism, witches, art and pedagogy, around the exhibition of Doris Stauffer at Centre culturel Suisse in Paris in April 2019. The guests are Anna Colin, Chantal Küng and Michael Hiltbrunner. Moderation Hanna Alkema.

Qaleh – The Women’s Quarter” (1966) shows the life of prostitutes in Tehran’s city brothels, an area known as Shahre Now. The film closely follows a number of women and communicates how the burden of social constraints led them to surrender in the face of their common fate. By including photos in the lm, a very unique and artistic approach that brings to mind Chris Marker’s classic La Jeteé, Shirdel not only tempers the subject’s emotional heaviness but also respects the individual’s privacy, two pitfalls that often afflict films that deal with themes of this nature. The film does explore the ...

Episode 3: Solidarity Katharina Brandl, Emilie Ding, Alexandra Navratil, Axelle Stiefel in conversation with Chus Martínez and Quinn Latimer. Promise No Promises is a podcasts series produced by the Women’s Center for Excellence, a research project between the Art Institute and the Instituto Susch—a joint venture with Grażyna Kulczyk and Art Stations Foundation CH. The Women’s Center for Excellence is conceived as a think tank tasked to assess, develop, and propose new social languages and methods to understand the role of women in the arts, culture, science, and technology, as well as in all knowledge areas that are interconnected with the field of culture ...

Episode 10: Somatic Knowledge Sonia Fernández Pan in conversation with artist Ania Nowak about the intimate connection between feeling and thinking, different forms and manifestations of love, as well the ambiguity of care, the situation of women in performing arts, and female bodies where illness and disease could also be a social symptom and not only a personal condition.

The latest Download commission, by Sheida Soleimani, laments the death of Reyhaneh Jabbari, who was convicted and hanged in Iran on October 25, 2014 for the alleged murder of her rapist. to oblivion.zip, a dirge-like work that eulogizes Jabbari’s untimely death, consists almost entirely of Jabbari’s own written and spoken words. Once expanded, the ZIP file presents a multi-layered work of nested folders that contain execution records, letters, photographs, and voice recordings. Soleimani has been creating photographic and sculptural works focused on human rights violations in Iran since 2015. This is the first time that she has used a digital ...

It’s so amazing how a single piece of music can become so powerful in so many different versions That’s the case with “This Woman’s Work” by the great Kate Bush, which was released over 20 years ago and still going strong! She had success with it in 1988 when John Hughes used it in a critical scene in his She’s Having a Baby and again when it was released as a single in 1989. Then Maxwell released his amazing male version of the song, which led to its use in the incredible dance tribute to breast cancer awareness on So You Think You Can Dance Countless dance acts have ...

Kate Millett parle de la prostitution avec des féministes, 1975 by Syn Guérin & Catherine Lahourcade (France, 20mins) TBC   Saute ma ville, 1968 by Chantal Akerman (Belgium, 13mins)   Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080, Bruxelles, 1975 by Chantal Akerman (Belgium, 201mins)   http://unemployedcinema.blogspot.com/

Episode 7: Tremblez This episode is based on the Symposium on feminism, witches, art and pedagogy, around the exhibition of Doris Stauffer at Centre culturel Suisse in Paris in April 2019. The guests are Caroline Cournède and Daniela Brugger, moderated by Anna Colin.