Lesson 5, Part 2
This part of the lesson will consider 3 manifestos.
Two were launched to announce a new group of women artists, the third was issued when the group finished its activities.
Introducing some conceptual clarity between these groups’ mission statements and the political manifesto might help us politically to think more carefully about the impact that feminism has in making change and what the difference is between the work of one organisation (as a contributor to feminist politics) and broader mobilizations of feminist politics in which there are different tendencies and programmes for change (outlined in Part 1).
Increasingly mission statements and manifestos appear merged because of the popular tendency for groups and organisations to describe their mission in terms of a manifesto.
What is a Mission statement?
A mission statement is a set of aims and objectives which characterise the work that a group or organisation does. A broader vision, political programme or a set of values are not usually part of a mission statement and there are reasons for these differences but these elements are needed in a manifesto.
Artists’ organisations, not-for-profits, NGOs and charities (including women’s arts organisations and women artists’ groups) routinely now display a “mission statement”. Mission statements typically state in one sentence what the group/company/organisation “is”. This one-line statement is usually followed by longer statements about the specific aims, objectives or activities undertaken by the group/company/organisation.
Increasingly, people are using the idea of a manifesto to spell out core values to which a not-for-profit organisation or a small arts company aspires, but this is still not the basis for a manifesto.
All companies, including not-for-profits and NGOs, to gain status as a company or register with governments as a legal entity/not-for-profit/charity/association, are required to summarise their activities in a mission statement or statement of purpose on registration. There are internationally recognised categories for common types of organisations in business/government today, and a mission statement clarifies their status.
Women’s groups find themselves conforming to these legal norms in order to gain social recognition/status as a legal entity (be it as a company, a not-for-profit, an NGO, a collective, a union or an arts association) and sometimes tax breaks. Most artists’ groups register themselves as associations, co-operatives, unions, limited companies, non-governmental organisations or as charities, when they set up an office, a gallery, a studio complex or start to organise a regular programme of events. While many small artist’s groups operate informally and co-operatively initially, most register as legal entities once money or property (including intellectual property) become involved precisely because of the legal/business/state recognition or eligibility for public/foundation grants that this process affords.
While there are many examples of how personal friendships between women artists sustaining particular projects and activities as a group or exhibition organisation in the short and long-term, as many informal women’s groups have found, organisational, legal and business models are needed to sustain different activities. This remains the case even when artist’s groups aspire to new kinds of feminist models for an institution or collective/collaborative and non-hierarchical ways of working.
There are many “well-established” ways in which artists groups are recognised in civil society in democratic states, as well as in authoritarian states (even if such organisations are closely scrutinised by the state or regarded with suspicion). Many governmental systems make sharp distinctions between a campaigning or lobbying group with a political mandate, rather than an humanitarian or educational purpose. Local, national or international remits are often declared in the founding documents or mission statements of these groups. A campaigning group with a political mandate is expected to register as a political party or interest group, both for recognition but also to join the political process.
In the arts, the feminist movement (either in the 19th/20th century as the woman’s movement or post-1968 as the Women’s Liberation Movement) has founded many not-for-profit organisations/charities/NGOs as institutions and organisations, libraries/archives, bookshops and/or commercial ventures (e.g. in manufacturing, retail and catering) as well as campaigning groups and some political women’s parties.
Feminists involved in the arts have founded galleries, museums, archives, libraries as co-operatives, women artist’s associations, collectives and not-for-profit organisations. Many have relied on donations or grants to sustain their work and to gain this money have had to form some kind of legal entity. Each one has had different commercial and not-for-profit financial status and different relationships with organising campaigns or political interventions over time.
In the quotes below are some examples of mission statements from a range of feminist groups past and present.
Some of these groups have offices and physical spaces, i.e. galleries and a building; some of them are registered as associations, companies or not-for-profit organisations. Some are collectives and voluntary groups. Some are business partnerships between women. Some are research projects, others organise events or campaigns or protests. Some are virtual projects organising occasional (physical) events. Not everyone who helps form these groups receives a wage and they have different models of sustaining and organising their activities.
There is no single model for organising as a feminist group in the arts, on the contrary, feminist organisations have shown considerable imagination and creativity in the models they have initiated or inspired. These short sentences are their mission statements.
Mission statements
and women artists’ groups
_______________________________________
Women’s Workshop Manifesto (Almost Free Theatre, London, 1973)
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Feminist Art Action Brigade
Manifesto (2003)
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Eva and Co.
THE MANIFESTO: Eva and Co. (c. 1992)
_______________________________________
Yes! Association / FÖRENINGEN JA!
Equal Opportunities Agreement (#1, 2005)
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Feminist (Art) Institution (Tereza Stejskalova)
Code of Practice (2017)
Cuntemporary consider queer and feminist practices as methods that are capable of destabilising artistic production through processes of interrogation, decentralisation and criticism.
The contemporary feminisms and queer practices that we work with aim to reclaim space not only for a plurality of genders and sexualities, but also for those bodies and discourses that are non-white, non-western, non-able or otherwise excluded from mainstream culture, politics and economic systems.
“Cuntemporary” a non-profit organisation that works with individuals and groups that explore feminist, queer and decolonial art practices and theories.
https://cuntemporary.org/about/
(started 2012)
Tomorrow Girl’s Troup is a Feminist Social Art Collective
For equality of all sexualities and genders in East Asia
We are “fourth wave” feminists.
Our genders and nationalities vary.
This is a social art group.
We work based on the internet.We focus on gender inequality issues in Japan and Korea through art and social projects. Our goal is to educate in order to achieve gender equality for all men, women and members of the LGBT community.
https://tomorrowgirlstroop.com/english-home-stacks#english-home-1
(started April 2015)
A.I.R. Gallery is a non-profit arts organization founded in 1972. It is an artist run organization and exhibition space that supports the open exchange of ideas and risk-taking by women artists in order to provide support and visibility. A self-directed governing body, the organization is an alternative to mainstream institutions and thrives on the network of active participants.
https://www.airgallery.org/
(New York, USA)
MAV, the Association of Women in the Visual Arts, is a group of professionals related to the visual arts field in Spain; artists, critics, managers, curators, gallery owners, collectors, designers, teachers, directors of public institutions, editors, researchers, specialist journalists, architects, lawyers etc., who work to improve the visibility and equal rights of women in our society, and more specifically in the field of visual arts.
MAV launched its own initiatives such as the M-arte y cultura visual magazine, specializing in art criticism from a gender perspective; the MAV awards, created in 2010; the MAVeducaLAB Art Education Workshops for Equality; and the editing of reports and publications.
A team, formed by the Board and a group of members of MAV has organized the Biennal with the support of the State’s Secretary of Culture and the Regional Government of Madrid.
MAV was founded on May 9, 2009 in a meeting with participants from all over the Spanish State held in La Casa Encendida, Madrid. MAV is registered in the National Register of Associations (No. 593523), as an inter-professional and state-level association without profit.
Contemporary Art and Feminism is a multi-faceted project calling on artists, activists, writers, students and thinkers with a passion for art and feminism. Through real and virtual activism, the project aims to reclaim historically overlooked feminist artists and work toward a more vibrant, egalitarian future. CAF web facilitates this collaboration and communication.
Future Feminist Archive (FFA) is an ongoing archival research project, addressing strategies of recovering lost information and promoting the legacies of local feminist art activists (active from 1975 to now) in order to build a solid platform for the future.
Care Project is a (2019) research project that explores how care in its many forms represents an alternative ethics to neo-liberalism. It will connect and explore researchers and artists working with care in a number of ways; Care as Relational, Care as Political Labour, Care as Moral Theory, Caring for earth/Country, Art practice as care – Care as Art Practice.
http://contemporaryartandfeminism.com/
(Started in 2013, Australia)
h.arta is a group of three women artists, Maria Crista, Anca Gyemant and Rodica Tache. We work together as h.arta group since 2001, when we founded h.arta space, a not-for-profit space in Timisoara. H.arta is sometimes a physical space, but many times its projects are taking different formats, changing contexts and locations. Our group is based on our friendship, on an everyday negotiation of the differences between us. We use friendship as a way of learning together how to acknowledge the different nuances of each situation, as a safe space, as a political statement about the power of solidarity. We are interested in topics ranging from knowledge production and (re)writing histories to gender issues in global capitalist times, all these in the context of working in various collaborations with persons and groups with different backgrounds.
http://www.hartagroup.ro/
(Started 2001)
The She Loves Collective is an alliance of female artists who share a strong belief in the power of art to create social change and transform lives—the lives of artists who create works as well as the lives of those touched by their works, in turn creating art anew.
The Collective seeks to organize and support events, exhibitions, and workshops that empower and showcase new, as well as established artists, making their voices heard and their work visible, while always testing the boundaries of medium, expression, and creativity.
The She Loves Collective aims to inspire and awaken the inner creative in us all and promote love in all its myriad manifestations, from love of self to love of others, whether romantic, sexual, sisterly, fraternal, cosmic, or familial—love extending across species and time, creating spaces and places of kindness, caring, and creativity in a world in dire need of just these…
The She Loves Collective resonates as a global sisterhood of artists, writers, and performers creating connections through participatory projects and emphasizing the transformative capacity of artistic expression.
http://shelovescollective.com/index.php/about/
Based in Los Angeles, 2016-2017
Women Eco Artists Dialog (WEAD) is a pioneering network of feminist ecoartists, educators, curators, and writers working toward the goal of a just and healthy world. We focus on women’s unique perspective in ecological and social justice art. WEAD maintains an invaluable website (weadartists.org) that serves as a virtual gallery of ecoartists work, connects artists and curators with exhibition opportunities, and educates and enlightens through its ground breaking WEAD Magazine.
PURPOSE
– To provide information regarding the ecoart and social justice art fields to artists, curators, writers, art and public art administrators, educators in art and ecology, cross-disciplinary professionals and others.
– To facilitate international networking among artists working with ecological and social justice issues.
– To further the fields of, and the understanding of environmental and social justice art.
Siren Art Studio (SAS) is a non-governmental painters workshop formed by four female artists. Varied in artistic styles, the four strive to convey in their works a unified theme, feminism….
Our goals:
Siren is the spiritual symbol of SAS as well as its interpretation of feminist culture. We have employed modern artistic methods to convey this human cultural heritage and vision resources to the society. Detailed objectives of SAS are as follows:
1. Oppose to the patriarchy belief that men are the central of the world and promote feminist artistic ideals.
2. Communicate with female artists from all over the world and make cooperative efforts with them to develop our feminist cultural resources.
3. Encourage individuality among female artists, explore ways to develop feminist arts and add in new spirits and experience to modern feminist arts.
Siren Art Studio, China (former online document, 1997/8).
4 women artists, including Cui Xuiwen, were involved. The Studio lasted several years but is no longer active.
Enemies of Good Art began as a series of public meetings, details of which are in the meetings section. Broadly considering the meaning of community, the movement’s aims are to
– Connect with practitioners to encourage participation in a series of public discussions and events.
– Reach artists affected by the economic and practical demands of childcare, so that we might encourage local support systems.
– Initiate public discussion at local level and within the wider art world.
– Seek to change the art world’s view of what it means to be an artist parent by provoking debate.
– Encourage civil associations through semi formal childcare arrangements and possible communal studio spaces for artists.
– Write our manifesto.
http://www.enemiesofgoodart.org/
Active 2009-2012
The Feminist Art Gallery is – a response, a process, a site, a protest, an outcry, an exhibition, a performance, an economy, a conceptual framework, a place and an opportunity. We host we fund we advocate we support we claim. The Feminist Art Gallery (FAG) is our geographical footprint located in Toronto, Canada and run by Allyson Mitchell and Deirdre Logue.
http://www.allysonmitchell.com/project.html?project=fag
Started, 2010
Das Frauenmuseum Bonn wurde am 2. Mai 1981 von der heutigen Direktorin Marianne Pitzen und einer Gruppe interdisziplinär arbeitender Frauen in Bonn gegründet.
Es war seinerzeit das weltweit erste Frauenmuseum. Die unterdessen international anerkannte Institution hat seit ihrem Bestehen über 500 Ausstellungen gezeigt und dazu umfangreiche Begleitprogramme veranstaltet.
Das Frauenmuseum Bonn wird vom Verein Frauenmuseum – Kunst, Kultur, Forschung e.V. getragen.
Das Frauenmuseum Bonn fördert die Kunst der Frauen mit dem Ziel, diese auch in der Kunstgeschichte zu verankern.
In wechselnden Ausstellungsprojekten werden Arbeiten zeitgenössischer Künstlerinnen der deutschen und internationalen Kunstszene gezeigt.
Translation:-
The Women’s Museum Bonn was founded on 2 May 1981 by the current director Marianne Pitzen and a group of interdisciplinary women in Bonn.
It was the world’s first women’s museum at the time. Since its inception, the internationally recognized institution has shown more than 500 exhibitions and has organised extensive accompanying programmes.
The Women’s Museum Bonn is supported by the Association Women’s Museum – Art, Culture, Research.The Women’s Museum Bonn promotes the art of women with the aim of anchoring it in art history.
In changing exhibition projects, works by contemporary artists from the German and international art scene are shown.
NYFAI Mission: (1979) Our vision of the New York Feminist Art Institute obliges us to act now to create an environment for the training of women in the arts. The challenge is to discover a teaching method which encourages women to use personal experience to create radiant art of our own. The curriculum of the school involves the development of self awareness in a social and political context, and the development of a sense of group identity. Work is both collective and individual. Consciousness raising and feminist philosophy are the primary components from which the curriculum organically develops.
For information about workshops, classes and instruction (1979-1990): http://www.nyfai.org/catalogs/covers.html
http://www.nyfai.org/
Founded 1979, New York
The three manifestos in this lesson offer a different perspective on manifestos which launch or develop women artists’ groups.
They are different models of how artists have worked together: one as a group within a larger union; one, as a group of artists deciding to work together on exhibitions; the last, as a group of artists who had worked together for 10 years deciding to end their association.
Women’s Workshop of Artists’ Union
The women’s workshop of the Artists Union was a sub-group of a larger association of artists which spent the early 1970s seeking Union recognition for artists in the UK. The Chair of the Artists’ Union in the 1970s was the artist, Mary Kelly, whose conceptual artwork is informed by feminism.
The archives of artists Terry Atkinson and Margaret Harrison at Tate Britain hold papers, newsletters and posters related to the work of the Women’s Workshop and there is also a single box of papers in the archive at Make: Women’s Art Library special collection, Goldsmith’s College.
Mary Kelly, Margaret Harrison and Kay Hunt worked together on Women and Work: A Document on the Division of Labour in Industry, 1973-1975, which is focused on women’s labour in a small paint factory in South London, prior to the Equal Pay Act of 1975.
Attempts have recently been made to revive the idea of an Artists’ Union in the UK, because there is no association or society which represents the interests of artists as a professional body on wages and rights. In the 1970s the situation of women artists and young women’s interests in feminism, led to them forming a separate sub-group to represent their own interests. The group held workshops and exhibitions.
The women’s workshop of the Artists Union was a group of women artists within the Artists Union who discussed the situation of women artists in the UK. In the 1970s, there were, as a response to wider recognition of feminism and the Women’s Liberation Movement, around 19 different women artists’ groups across the country. There was also a Women’s Art History Workshop in the Artists’ Union, working as another small group. In this statement from a Workshop on Images of Women, the 1970s understanding of women’s oppression having a damaging effect on how women project their own image into history is considered.
‘In order to create an alternative an oppressed group must at once shatter the self-reflecting world which encircles it and, at the same time, project its own image onto history. In order to discover its own identity as distinct from that of the oppressor it has to become visible to itself. All revolutionary movements create their own ways of seeing. But this is the result of great labour.’
– Extract from workshop documents, ‘Workshop on Images of Women’, by the Women’s Workshop of the Artists Union, c 1972
Although I would have liked to include more than this single quote from the papers of the Women’s Workshop, finding this material is proving extremely difficult. On the one hand, it is not easily accessible online and like much of women’s history has not been the subject of major accounts.
You can read:-
Pauline Barrie’s interview in n.paradoxa on the founding of Women Artists Slide Library in the late 1970s which refers back to her activism as a member of the Artists’ Union: Pauline Barrie talks with Katy Deepwell ‘Founding Feminism: Women’s Workshop, Artists Union and Women Artists Slide Library’ n.paradoxa vol. 38 pp.56-65
You can also find elements of the work of the Women’s Art History Workshop and the Women’s Workshop discussed in Roszika Parker and Griselda Pollock’s book Framing Feminism: Art and the Women’s Movement, 1970-1985 (Pandora, 1987/1995)
There are also references to some aspects of their work in John A. Walker’s book Left Shift: Radical Art in 1970s Britain,
in my essay on women artists in the UK in A. Jakubowska and K. Deepwell All Women Spaces in Europe in the Long 1970s (2018)
in Siona Wilson Art Labor, Sex Politics: Feminist Effects in 1970s British Art and Performance (2015).
I thought that an appropriate comparison between development of an Artist’s Union in the 1970s and contemporary groups like W.A.G.E would point to the long-standing character of artists operating as a union.
You could compare the manifestos with other campaigns to improve the situation of artists in the artworld (which have feminist ideas within them)
WAGE: https://wageforwork.com/work#top
Feminist Art Action Brigade (2003)
FAAB’s manifesto was produced as an announcement of a new group of women artists from Japan and outlined its aspirations as the Feminist Art Action Brigade.
It is reproduced in the ebook and is still available on their original website at:-
http://home.interlink.or.jp/~reflect/GAAP/FAABe.html
It is signed by 7 women artists:
Ito, Tari
Lim, Desiree
Nishimura, Yumiko
Ono, Nonko
Shimada, Yoshiko
Takahashi, Fumiko
Yasuda, Kazuyo
The group organised several exhibitions, performances and discussions during their existence. Borderline Cases is one of them.
Shimada is joined by four artists — Mako Idemitsu (from Japan); Park Young Sook and Yun Suk Nam (South Korea); and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (the United States) — in an exhibition themed around feminism and gender politics. Borderline Cases is organized by F.A.A.B. (the Feminist Art Action Brigade) and curated by Kim Sunhat of the Mori Art Museum. It is now running at A.R.T. Gallery in Ebisu, 2004.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2004/06/30/arts/skeletons-come-out-of-the-closet/#.XLb3HqTTWbg
http://home.interlink.or.jp/~reflect/borderlinecases/indexe.html
The artist, Yoshiko Shimada, was one of the key artists behind the group. http://www.otafinearts.com/en/artists/yoshiko-shimada/
She was also part of two later initiatives, the Gender and Art Project, http://gaap.sblo.jp/index-2.html and the Tomorrow Girls Troop https://tomorrowgirlstroop.com/
You can find out more about her work as an artist, activist and researcher at:-
http://artradarjournal.com/2018/06/27/feminist-art-and-research-on-alternative-art-education-in-post-1968-japan-shimada-yoshiko-artist-profile/
and in Eliza Tan’s interview: ‘Revisiting Art, Feminism and Memory in Singapore and Japan since the 1990s: Amanda Heng and Yoshiko Shimada’
n.paradoxa vol. 39 pp.5-17
Let’s consider the content of FAAB’s manifesto
The group confirm their identity in several ways: they are a “brigade”, with all the connotations this has of militant activity, but brigades also convey ideas of solidarity, loose alliances between rebels in their own interest.
The group also question how feminism was understood in the 1990s as redundant, dead – even as patriarchal ideologies in the “New World Order” were reinforced and reintroduced.
The manifesto highlights their desire to move away from “pyramidal” structures of control, to “horizontal” ones.
They are for freedom of expression and question who can be an artist.
They present themselves as for a better system for everyone, not simply as “anti-male”.
The manifesto emphasises being against biological politics and for queer alliances.
Their programme will be exhibitions of women artists but they seek broader political alliances and will work on political as well as artistic strategies.
Eva and Co: The End of an Artists’ Group (1992)
Eva and Co took the unusual step of issuing a manifesto to declare the end of the group’s co-operation in 1992.
Eva and Co was founded in 1981 by a group of women in Austria (it was based in Graz) coming from different fields: visual arts, music, literature, and jurisprudence. The group was a band, an exhibition organising group, a journal and a cultural organisation for women artists.
From 1986, they founded a journal, each issue focused on a different topic, e.g. “Architecture”, “Visual Arts”, “Film and Video”, “Music”, “Literature”, “Science Fiction” or on contents like “Men”, “Work”, “Power”, “Violence”, “Desire”, reflected from the viewpoints of visual artists, writers, theoreticians, activists… Online you can find a summary of the contents of each Heft/Issue, 1982-1992.
Eva and Co. This document describes the groups aims and purposes in developing a cultural magazine. It is a retrospective history of the group in their own words: http://www.grassrootsfeminism.net/cms/sites/default/files/Ursprung_%20Eva%20and%20Co%20A%20Feminist%20Cultural%20Magazine_0.pdf
By 1992, the group considered the production of physical publications as obsolete due to the expansion of the internet, and the women involved in Eva and Co decided to continue art activism and networking in many different ways.
1992 is significant as the moment when this was written, because it was a period of increasingly conservative and bureaucratic government, not just in Austria but across Europe, where management and administration were prioritised, in terms of new models of “responsible governance”. Many radical women’s organisations were asked to improve their “bureaucracy”, balance their budgets, train or recruit professional administrative staff, and answer questions about the economic value of the programmes they were pursuing. This manifesto can be seen as a direct response to these pressures from State funders who were on the one hand looking for models of excellence while on the other aggressively looking for means of reducing the limited funding of small fringe and alternative groups whose politics they did not support or whose claims about Art the bureaucrats regarded as questionable. The early to mid-1990s saw the closure and dis-investment in many feminist organisations from the 1970s and 1980s, particularly libraries and archives, as well as their consolidation into larger public organisations. This was also pursued with the conviction that feminism was dead and women’s initiatives in particular were no longer needed! The idea that the women’s liberation movement had ended and that its legacy in arts organisations should be abandoned was widespread and this idea was promulgated by many women. The 1990s also saw the switch from broader programmes of equal opportunities to the start of developments towards gender mainstreaming as well as the switch from women’s studies programmes to gender studies programmes in Universities.
Since the 1980s Eva Ursprung has worked on her own projects as artist, musician and curator and continued to live and work in Graz: https://ursprung.mur.at/. She continued to be an active member of the FACES group for women working in new media and hosted their 20th anniversary event in 2018.
Veronika Dreier and Eva Ursprung continued their collaboration with Doris Jauk-Hinz into a new group W.A.S. Womyn’s Art Support.
You can read about this group in n.paradoxa: Judith Schwentner, ‘Kunstverein W.A.S. (Womyn’s Art Support) the danube streaming show, Veronika Dreier, Doris Jauk-Hinz, Eva Ursprung in the conversation with Judith Schwentner’ n.paradoxa vol.17 (Jan 2006) pp.60-69
W.A.S. also featured in the Women’s Festival, WOMENT!, organised by the City of Graz to highlight the work of women artists, when it was European Capital of Culture in 2003. You can find out more about this here: https://woment.mur.at/index_WOMENT.html
Was this the realisation of a festival for women artists that this manifesto anticipated?
Let’s Consider the Arguments in this Manifesto
What is the sin that the group have committed?
How do they see their work as a bold step in non-conformist and different strategies in the current market / gallery system that others have not taken?
Why should they serve as the “token” group, endorsed by the State, which has and continues to deflect the art world from responding to many women artists’ actions and artworks.
Promoting themselves was not their ambition, change in the culture was.
Their magazine was never meant to be a mass circulation magazine. It was always a small circulation alternative – non-conformist.
The manifesto is against the notion that every good idea has to be commercially successful and scaled up in capitalist terms. Nor should it be dependent on State Funding and Recognition. Equally Art is not simply speculative investment, nor does it need to be accommodated by the policies / acknowledgement of the State.
Does the state want “women’s art”?
What values for Art does the State affirm and why and how does Eva and Co’s depart from this?
Read carefully the list of claims in these points, which spell out how their conception of art is different: it is political, it is experimental, subversive, revolutionary. Art is a laboratory. It is not a decoration, a tourist attraction.
If art is about content, it needs freedom of expression. It needs a political conception of art.
Women’s organisations are kept “barely alive” by the state support of the system. They remain under-funded but not “cut free” by this thin line of support from the State.
The group’s success “killed us” – it did not affirm the kind of art they wanted to make, the alternatives seemed “burn out” or “pacifying” the demands of State funders.
They suggest an art strike, for women to stop making art which conforms to the system, but simultaneously for the State to endorse only “Women’s Art” for the next 10 years.
The alternative is to go underground / or to the sky. To find other means of expression, innovation and survival, to develop different audiences for art and different solutions for arts organisations than those endorsed by the State. “To give free rein to our madness”.
What roles are rejected/endorsed for artists?
And what expectations for being female are refused by these words?
Manifestos can also project the institutions or groups we would like to see realised and the kinds of changes that feminism would bring if equal opportunities policies were enacted in museums and galleries.
The next part of the lesson focuses on manifestos of this type. Go to Part 3
