With It being the 'Month' of international Women's day, this year it was my mission to take part of the events and exhibitions happening in March.
8th
I got an email about this talk as it was run by RMIT, and I was working in the city that day and basically all of my art surrounds feminism, so just made a split decision and went.
I ran into one of my teachers, Heather at the discussion funnily enough.
I had actually never heard of Braidotti before, I wasn't familiar with her work.
Her talk on Posthuman Feminism was very thought provoking, although I don't agree with everything she said it was a great jumping off point in the realm of ongoing futurism, and the rapidly oncoming post "Humanity" future ahead of us and women's place in that. She said we need to be on top of the technologies that are emerging, and women need to force themselves to be apart of that or we may be left behind. My one criticism is that she mentioned a sort of post gendered future, but did not mention the Trans community in that discussion. Surely when you are taking about "Transhumanism" you talk about Trans and Nonbinary experiences.
I am a massive advocate for Trans and Nonbinary rights especially in Feminisms, I try to be very carful of which feminists I support as TERFs (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists) can hide their bigotry behind equality.
Otherwise it was a great talk and opened a few Ideas for me.
16th
Board at work I looked up the QV Women's centre in the City and saw there was a new exhibition that was having its opening night soon.
Difficult Woman - seemed like an interesting title, and I needed to flex my networking skills.
I met Jade, the Artist and had some great chats with her about art, life, RMIT (coincidentally she is also studding the Batch of Fine art, just in sculpture) being a women and shared our Horror stories of misogyny. Her work had a lot of female anger to it, something that I can relate to quite a lot.
Also coincidentally another RMIT student attended a little later (She was studying Journalism). It was a great experience, Jade had a lot of wisdom to give me about my art practice and about womanhood. As a relatively young woman, I tend to overlook mature women's voices in the space of feminism, (I guess that's my adolescent naivety showing). But young women should really listen to their stories, we can all help each other and learn from the lives of others, Misogyny doesn't end once you get past 30.
26th
IWD4
I was asked to apart of Platform exhibitions 4th International Women's day Exhibition!, a one night only exhibition.
Which was at the Abbotsford Convent.
The artwork and artist presented there were amazing, great work that pushed the boundaries and shed a light on the stories of may different women and Nonbinary people.
The work that stood out to me the most and made the most impact was a digital piece by Trans artist Ara.
The work was a projected image of a sickle and a Pythagoras cup in the shape of a uterus.
Connected to the work is a QR code that leads you to a site that looks much like a Go Fund me but it was "Suffer4me".
My Name is Ara, unfortunately as a woman who was born without a uterus and ovaries, I am unable to give birth, nor have I ever experienced menstruation. As these are the common sources of suffering required for womanhood, I'm in need of a different kind of suffering to fulfil the requirements. With the mistreatment of trans woman not being seen as enough to validate our womanhood, I've decided to create the suffer4me page to crowdsource enough suffering so that society might finally validate and not question my womanhood. I do feel pretty embarrassed asking for your suffering, figurative or otherwise, and have one back and forth on whether to create this page. I don't want to bring more suffering into the world, but I don't have many options and have concluded that asking for help is the right way to go, thank you so much for reading, suffer generously.
You choose symbols that represent your 'suffering' and then commit to 'donating' it by holding your finger to the screen of your phone as the "suffering" accumulates.
Even though the holding of the screen gave me no real pain, I did feel a 'spiritual' suffering leave my body though my finger. As the 'suffering' was completed blood falls from the sickle into the cup, but as a few people 'donate' it gets too high and empty's its contents out, because the accumulation of suffering in worthless in the eyes of transphobes, its futile.
That 'feeling' when donating really connected me to the piece. As a woman with PCOS I have suffered a lot for my "Womanhood" but as PCOS causes symptoms that are traditionally masculine traits (Like unwanted hair growth and male pattern baldness etc.) My Femineity is brought into question. Although I will never know what it is like to be a trans Woman, I can sympathize with the "suffering" they are subjected to.
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