#nowyoucango

Tues 2 February,  7pm-9pm SPACE, 129–131 Mare Street, Hackney London, E8 3RH

Following the intensive Now You Can Go programme of events across several London arts venues in December 2015, which grew out of the Feminist Duration Reading Group, in the February meeting we will reflect on the programme and discuss ideas for future readings. The Feminist Duration Reading Group is open to all. Please contact Persilia for directions [email protected]

Now You Can Go is a programme of events considering feminist thinking, art and activism, taking place across The Showroom, the ICA, Space Studios and Raven Row, London (1–13 December 2015). Juxtaposing historical with contemporary positions, the series explores feminist concepts of generation and genealogy. It asks whether practices of consciousness-raising and collectivity might help us to combat the fragmentation, exhaustion and anxiety that we experience under networked capitalism. 

The programme draws inspiration from Italian feminisms, including the work of collectives formed in the 1970s: Rivolta Femminile (Female Revolt), Libreria delle Donne di Milano (Milan Women’s Bookstore), and Lotta Femminista (Feminist Struggle).

A touchstone is the work of Carla Lonzi, the writer and cofounder of Rivolta Femminile, and her refusal of power and rejection of masculine creativity that exploits female supportive activity. This process of ‘deculturation’ entailed Lonzi’s withdrawal from her roles as an art critic, as a feminist leader, and from her relationship with her lover, the sculptor Pietro Consagra, which she documented in a dialogue between them called Vai pure (Now You Can Go).

Now You Can Go grows out of the Feminist Duration Reading Group which meets monthly at Space Studios in London. The programme has been developed by participants from the Feminist Duration Reading Group including Angelica Bollettenari, Giulia Casalini, Diana Georgiou, Laura Guy, Irene Revell and Amy Tobin, and is coordinated by Helena Reckitt with Dimitra Gkitsa.

Download the full programme here

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Thu 10 Dec, 19.15pm Raven Row, 56 Artillery Lane, E1 7LS London, United Kingdom

Carla Lonzi Teach-In led by art historian Teresa Kittler

Sun 6 and Tues 8 Dec, 7.15pm - 9.15pm Raven Row, 56 Artillery Ln, London E1 7LS

Two-part lecture and workshop with Nina Wakeford  **PLEASE NOTE this is a two day workshop**

Using materials on the methods of oral history from a herstory archive, this lecture and workshop will explore what it means to feel as well as look backwards, as well as the question of what counts as evidence of the past. The event will be in two parts. In the first, there will be a performance-lecture and workshop using materials and methods from an existing archive in order to collate questions that resonate with the themes of Now You Can Go – namely the questions of genealogy, emotions, and collectivity. In the second part there will be an opportunity for participants to report back on answers to these questions that they have been able to generate in between these two sessions. This workshop would suit artists and researchers interested in interviewing and personal testimony. Previous experience with interview methods is not required, although we expect each participant to generate some material in relation to the workshop theme between the sessions.

Feeling Backwards is derived from the title of Heather Love's book Feeling Backward: Loss and the Politics of Queer History (Harvard University Press, 2009).

Booking available through Eventbrite

A number of Bursary tickets are available for those unable to pay. To apply please email: [email protected]

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Saturday 5 December,  11.30am ICA, The Mall, SW1Y 5AH London, United Kingdom

A leading experimental filmmaker from Italy in the 1960s and 1970s, Marinella Pirelli’s 16mm film explorations of light and movement remained wrapped up in a dark basement for over forty years and have only recently been publicly exhibited again. She was one of the few Italian woman artists working in experimental film and her works traverse numerous thematics connected to the body, the gaze and the relationship with the cinema apparatus/projection event This selection of her works, showing for the first time in the UK, questions the paradigms of image generation and their relationship to narrative and cinematic convention. Included are Il lago, soggettivo-oggettivo (1965), Narciso (1966), Appropriazione, Azione propria, A propria azione, Sole in mano (1973) and Indumenti(1967), that features the Italian writer and feminist leader Carla Lonzi, whose ideas are a touchstone for the Now You Can Go programme.

"Perhaps Narciso contains all the conscious moments of my life. I was three years old when I realised I could remember: for example the birth of my sister, fourteen months younger then me. And later on, recalling this very moment I said to myself: ‘If I remembered, then I also must have had had conscious thought.’ And so I said: ‘I will memorise it’, and I was doing this with all sorts of things that were capturing my attention (flowers, lights, colours, people, gestures, sensations). That’s because I wanted that every present moment was total; me always as a whole of all the things that I was and knew, plus the new moment, to not loose anything, always knowing that every single thing is transitory, lost, over, immediately dead, or better, different. So here is the adventure: the making of a thought, the approaching of the day, the entering of the darkness." Marinella Pirelli, 1966 – 67

Curated by Lucia Aspesi with Irene Revell.

Tickets available through the ICA website

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Saturday 5 December,  11.30am  ICA, The Mall, SW1Y 5AH London, United Kingdom

Speakers from the fields of art, activism, academia and journalism reflect on feminist efforts to transform the work of love and care, including historical struggles over housework and the wage, issues of migrant domestic labour and alternative potential models of collective care. Chaired by Emma Dowling, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, speakers include Justice for Domestic Workers Coordinator Marissa Begonia; co-founders of the critical/activist organisation Plan C, Camille Barbagallo and Nicholas Beuret (via Skype); Guardian journalist Dawn Foster; and art historian Larne Abse Gogarty. With an interruption by artist Pablo Pakula. Tickets available through the ICA website  

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Tue 11 August,  7pm SPACE, 129–131 Mare Street, Hackney London, E8 3RH

This monthly reading group considers the resonance of earlier moments of feminist thinking, art and activism in contemporary life. Juxtaposing texts from the 1970s and 1980s with current positions, the group highlights feminist concepts of intimacy, communication and collectivity. The relevance of the practice of consciousness-raising, or autocoscienza within Italian feminism, is explored. Might a return to such tactics help us to combat the exhaustion, fragmentation and anxiety that we experience under networked capitalism today? What are the potentials, and pitfalls, of such collective processes of talking, listening, and analysing?

Texts from outside the Anglo-American feminist tradition will be sought out. These include the works of Italian feminists Luisa Muraro and Carla Lonzi. Lonzi’s accounts of her exit from the women’s movement, the art world, and her intimate relationship with the artist Pietro Consagra, are key reference points, opening up questions about leave-taking and affective withdrawal as feminist tactics.

Please email for details and readings to: [email protected] and for directions: [email protected]

The Feminist Duration Reading Group builds on the research symposium Feminist Duration in Art and Curating that took part in Art Department at Goldsmiths, University of London, in March 2015.