A discussion and debate that took place in the context of the international and interdisciplinary conference Feminist Emergency on Friday 22 June 2017 at Birkbeck, University of London.

 

By strange coincidence, 2017 is not just the centenary of the October Revolution (where women workers played a key role) but also a year rife with deadly conflict, contradictions, dead-ends and setbacks. A decade after the outbreak of the global economic crisis we are living through seemingly uncontainable and uncontrollable consequences, including the mainstreamisation of white supremacy and neo-fascism with hefty does of ‘masculine’ leadership. Patriarchy strikes back, complementing the harrowing effects of neoliberal governance under the ideological hegemony of ‘there is no alternative’. We are apparently expected to put up with loss of rights, precarity, austerity, deepening racial and class divides, environmental destruction, the re-emergence of the nuclear threat (do we remember Greenham Common?), female leaders who distance themselves from feminism, and democracies of the ‘lesser evil’ as a sad reminder of what has happened to the right to vote, for which the suffragettes fought a century back. These conditions constitute, as per the conference title, a ‘feminist emergency’.

As for the art field, we are accustomed to suppressed wages or, more often, non-wages, excelling at free labour; as women, we get paid less and tend to stay at the bottom of the art pyramid; we legitimise business-oriented institutions from the museum as a collecting facility to art schools as hubs for entrepreneurial ideology; we are participating in a demeaned higher education often based on fees, debt, and certainly rampant competition; our intellectual and artistic work takes place against the demands of the managerial elite; we have exhibited radical work under the logos of corporate sponsors; we have written a lot of theory that never crossed to praxis; most of us have not taken to the streets in years and the strike is mostly something we reflect on; we make do, with overall minimal resistance. Is it also time to see these conditions as a feminist emergency?

Where does feminism in art stand in relation to all of this? Do we need to reconsider priorities, strategies, and of course demands, both in relation to the art field and women’s lives overall? What does it mean to live, work and struggle as feminists today? Feminist Emergency: The Art Field, as part of the international and interdisciplinary conference Feminist Emergency, is an opportunity to get together in order to address the above. It will include a small number of short presentations, the purpose of which is to instigate discussion and debate. If you are in London, join us.

 

Instigators:

Angela Dimitrakaki (Edinburgh College of Art)

Kerri Jefferis (Artist)

Kirsten Lloyd (Edinburgh College of Art)

Helena Reckitt (Goldsmiths, University of London)

Hilary Robinson (Middlesex University)

Lara Perry (University of Brighton)