Introduction
This course looks at a range of feminist art manifestos written between 1970s and the present as a means to explore the relations between feminism and contemporary art as both a politics and a poetics. The manifestos come from many countries across the world.
What is a manifesto? A political programme, a declaration, a definitive statement of belief. Neither institutional mission statement, nor religious dogma; neither a poem, nor a book. As a form of literature, manifestos occupy a specific place in the history of public discourse as a means to communicate radical ideas. Distributed as often ephemeral documents, as leaflets or pamphlets in political campaigns or as announcements of the formation of new parties or new avant-gardes, manifestos above all declare what its authors are for and against, and ask people who read them to join them, to understand, to share these ideas. The feminist art manifestos in this course that we shall study do all of these things as they explore the potential and possibilities of women’s cultural production as visual artists.
This course is written by Katy Deepwell, an art critic based in London.
She is Professor of Contemporary Art, Theory and Criticism at Middlesex University and the founder and editor of n.paradoxa/KT press.
She compiled the ebook which is offered as a free download for this course.
Each lesson is structured in 3 parts and relies on you reading 5-6 manifestos.
You are advised to read the manifestos for each part of the lesson, before engaging with the Lesson.
Each lesson explores a particular theme.
The lessons lead you to further web resources or reading about the authors of the manifestos and the topic in question.
Most of the manifestos are in the ebook, a few (post-2014) are available online. Links are provided in the lessons.
Another key source is the list of manifestos available at:-
https://www.ktpress.co.uk/feminist-art-manifestos.asp
You are asked to respond with your thoughts or ideas in the discussion forums. The summary page for each lesson has space for short comments and questions.
The lessons in this course are available both from within the Course section of “My Profile” and by following the page menu “Advanced Course”.
The forums for these lessons is also accessed here.
If you use the “My Profile/Courses” section of the website, you can mark each lesson as complete.
Feminist art manifestos: the starting point for this course…
a word from the tutor, Katy Deepwell, about the course, the ebook and reading out loud….
I started collecting these manifestos in preparation for a seminar I held at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London in 2011, with the aim that by reading them in public (out loud in a group setting), the character, quality and depth of feminist protest in the art world and its diversity would become more visible.
You can watch the recording (30 March 2011) here: ICA seminar on Feminist Art Manifestos with Katy Deepwell
(It is fun to do this on your own or as a group – some of these texts are not meant to be quietly read by one person, but are supposed to be read out loud – as a proclamation of intent to a specific audience)
Before I published the ebook, I wrote a list of feminist and feminist art manifestos online at http://www.ktpress.co.uk/feminist-art-manifestos.asp part of the website’s Feminist-Art-Observatory and I continue to maintain and develop this work. This webpage offers an even broader collection of early feminist political manifestos: from anarchist, radical separatist, left-wing and red stocking politics over the last forty years – as well as some early feminist and futurist manifestos. Presenting this collection of manifestos in a simple chronological list online underlined the fact that women artists had continued to produce manifestos, beyond the earliest moments of the women’s liberation movement post-1968.
In 2014, I published an anthology of 35 of these manifestos (KT press, 2014) as an electronic book and wrote a short introduction. In the journal I founded and edited, n.paradoxa: international feminist art journal ( 1998-2017), I had also published four of these manifestos. Bringing them altogether in the first ebook, I wanted to draw attention to the relationships between feminist politics as a set of “demands” and feminist art practices and poetics as experiments in feminist aesthetics which focused on women artists’ subjectivity, expression and creative potential.
In 2019, I wrote another longer essay about Feminist art manifestos for Cambridge Literary Review, issue 11, on ‘Manifestos’ pp.121-132. Since then, I’ve offered several seminars in London, in Prague and in Malmo on feminist art manifestos, as reading groups for students. I also wrote a catalogue essay on feminist art manifestos for the exhibition, Empowerment, at Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg in 2022-2023.
In 2022, a new print and ebook of 50 Feminist Art Manifestos was published by KT press.
None of the 50 texts in the 2022 ebook – available for the course – are identical in approach, content or poetics. If they share anything, it would have to be defined in very general terms through the different ideas of women’s art practices, of feminist politics and women’s creative potential that they uphold. The writing embraces many different modes of address and presents a wide range of values through their chosen topics: from care, love, ideas of sexuality, witchcraft, aspirations for the future and notions of creativity (both known and unknown). Considering and analyzing this diversity is the subject of this MOOC.
The course is based on a range of other online resources:-
https://www.ktpress.co.uk/feminist-art-manifestos.asp
click here for
Further Reading on and offline
about Manifestos
Instructions
to obtain essential reading for this course
Katy Deepwell (ed) 50 Feminist Art Manifestos (KT press, 2022)
The ebook is available for instant purchase, click here: £4.50.
If you want a physical print copy, please order here and allow at least 2 weeks for delivery. Prices vary, dependent on post charges.
