A thematic project by Jan Verwoert (November 2010-June 2011)

We have seen enough of the same old patriachal patterns repeat themselves in society and the arts. But even though the protest against them by now has its own history, it doesn’t mean that things have changed that drastically. Especially not in the art world where, despite the fact that there are so many incredible female artists, writers and curators around, certain prevalent role and career models—modes of presenting your persona and work, modes of claiming territory, modes of gaining, wielding and sustaining power—still give particular types of men access to priviledged positions, and make life considerably more difficult for women.

How do we break this spell? We, in this case potentially meaning anyone, female, male or otherwise, who finds themselves at odds with the way things work, and who finds that the way things work prevents them from doing freely what they seek to do and receive respect for doing so. The enormously powerful intervention of feminism lies, among others, in its rejection of the options imposed by patriachal structure of performing gender. This is also a call for radically opening up the repertoire of what could be possible in terms of how gender is interpreted in the everyday practice of producing art and culture. No artist should be tied down to his or her gender. But precisely because it still happens all the time, the standards applied in such instants should be contested. To analyse and criticize these false standards seems most urgent.

To expand the practical repertoire of interpreting and performing gender in art, however, it seems equally urgent to historicize: It still happens all the time that genealogies of contemporary art—even those that make a high claim for criticality in the modern avant-gardist tradition, including Minimalism and Conceptual Art—are being constructed exclusively around the work of male artists. Parallel to this the intuitive availability of male role models from the history of art allows men to easily slip into established default modes of performing power and personality (e.g. when drunk, play the Kippenberger, it works). To look at the work of women in the history of art is therefore not just a means of expanding the canon of what is known, it can also be a means to open up the repertoire of how one can perform the role of the artist in other ways than those default modes provided by the cult of the male genius. There are—and have always been—so many more stimulating and liberating ways to be an artist and make art.

This seminar will begin with a close reading and in-depth discussion of two pivotal books that analyze patriachal structures and address (the need for) a different tradition. Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own and Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble (who in her turn examines the history of feminist thinking as well as the structural dimensions of patriarchy). The second half of the year will then be dedicated to taking a close look at the practices of female artists and the manner in which they interpreted the role of the modern artist, from Katarzyna Kobro, Natalia Goncharova, Bronislava Nijinska, Eileen Grey, Gertrude Stein and Florine Stettheimer, to Bridget Riley, Niki de Saint Phalle, Alina Szapocznikov and Pauline Boty, to Martha Rosler, Adrian Piper, Susan Hiller, Lee Lozano, Caroline Schneemann, Nathalia LL, Joan Jonas, Sanja Ivecovic, Yvonne Rainer…

With a performance by Paulina Olowska and a public lecture by Silke Otto Knapp.