Gender in Art at Loughborough - Day 2

Another busy day.  I only took notes of the keynote speaker, Professor Marsha Meskimmon.

She is interested in how one operates, lives and is permitted to exist in the world.  She considers citizenship - embodied and beyond the nation state; worth - public and cosmopolitan; and the role of public art for citizenship/denizenship.  She likes the term denizenship as it incorporates migrants and the temporary nature of people's time in an area due to work, study etc.  We are a more mobile population now.  She believes Art needs to 'do' something.  Practice and product are more important than the artist.

Monica Ross, Anniversary.

Monica Ross created a performance piece where people memorised and quoted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) to reassert the rights of people.  It is universal - does not separate out women, for different or special treatment.  Universal and local issues are linked.  Personal is political.  Representation leads to articulation.  Don't flatten difference to achieve coalition.

Suzanne Lacy & Linda Pruess, International Dinner Party. 1979

This was held on the eve of the opening of Judy Chicago's Dinner Party piece, and was held in worldwide venues to celebrate local significant women, and was held at the same time (across different timezones over 24 hours).  Plays on concept of audience, relationships, communications, and political intention. Created by marginalised artists.  Rethinking citizenship comes from the margins.  Materialises rather than represents.

Alison Lapper Pregnant

Not sure what MM said here. Something about place, plinth, significance.  I was too busy disagreeing when she said Lapper was a thalidomide baby - she is not.  I read Lapper's biography and she has a genetic malformation, which is often attributed by viewers to be thalidomide.  I still think Quinn has made a fantastic work of art.

Rosi Braidotti 2002

Politically informed map that outlines our own situated perspective.

University of Cape Town - Rhodes Must Fall.  The statue of Rhodes had been removed for political reasons (partly to avoid defacement?) but a graffiti artist had painted the shadow of it, indicating his shadow was still affecting South Africa.

She was disappointed that the positive achievements of the groups involved in the break-up of apartheid had splintered around difference - Women and LGBT members had been ousted.  Masculine 'normative' citizens used inappropriate power.

She also noted there had been much looting of colonial artworks and ceremonial burning.  She felt this was poor practice as artworks can be used for subsequent interpretation to understand previous thought processes and practices, but lead to different conclusions.  Think of Mao Tse Tungs cultural revolution and the destruction of various objects - to the detriment of later generations.  This leads to an inability to vary interpretation.

World citizenship leads to many right answers.

Betye Saar The power of place.  Biddy Mason's Place

An astonishing story about a black female slave.  Owned(!) by a white man, trained as a midwife, gave birth to 3 children fathered by her owner, owner moved to California and she had to walk across the USA behind the wagon.  But once she got there, the previous year slavery had been abolished in CA, so she took her owner to court and gained her freedom.  By moving location, her freedom was achieved.

MM's definition of denizen - mobile and ongoing; continual action of making oneself at home over time and across spaces.  Not colonisation (incomer imposing their ways on host) but mutuality between host and incomer.  Change and accommodate with respectful engagement/hospitality - differences acknowledged but not fixed.