CONNECTING LINES: TRACING CARE ON THE INTERSECTION OF FEMINISM AND ECOLOGY

This panel will showcase various approaches to ecofeminism presented by researchers who have recently published books on the subject. Ecofeminism: Between Women’s  and Green Studies (Ekofeminizam: između zelenih i ženskih studija, Durieux Publisher, Zagreb, 2020), edited by Goran Đurđević and Suzana Marjanić, focuses on ecofeminism within the context of Southeast Europe. It provides an analysis of social processes and structures, as well as perspectives on activism from individual groups and actors in public life. Myriam Bahaffou, starting with her book Glitter on Compost: Everyday Ecofeminisms (Le Passager Clandestin, 2022), analyzes ecofeminism through everyday practices and linguistic perspectives, building upon them concepts.

During this panel, we will explore various approaches to the question of ecofeminism and the intersection of theory and practice. We will also ask panelists about the most urgent issues in the feminist and environmental field, and inquire about how we can implement “ecofeminisms” in our daily lives. The panelists will join the event via zoom. 

In this session, we will look closer into different artistic practices engaged with issues of ecology, feminism, and care by presenting (segments of) artworks within a conference format. Introducing artistic strategies such as Live Action Role-Play, collective performance, film, video, and sound, we will learn about speculative future scenarios in works by Diana Lelonek and Sophie Allerding. We will encounter posthuman feminist perspectives in Maja Smrekar’s collective performance, as well as existing coping mechanisms employed in the framework of subsistence economies and the legal frameworks that enabled exploitation in the first place in the films of Marwa Arsanios. We will also engage in an attentive listening session with the Ida Hirsenfelder sound works.

After the panel, there will be a screening of films by Marwa Arsanios, where we will become acquainted with existing mechanisms of subsistence economies and legal frameworks that enable the exploitation of nature and labor.

In Part 3: Micro Resistencias, Marwa Arsanios focuses on the region of Tolima, also known as one of the coffee producing regions in Colombia. The film brings to our attention several stories of women who, in turn, talk about their struggle to preserve the ancestral knowledge of the indigenous communities concerning the cultivation and protection of the seeds that enable them to achieve a form of agricultural autonomy.

The film Who is Afraid of Ideology? Part 4: Reverse Shot departs from a collaborative project that is attempting to shift the status of a private land area in the north of Lebanon to a common or a social waqf. The aim is to advance the right of usership over ownership. The land would only be used by people who do not own land for agricultural purposes.

The first two chapters of Who is Afraid of Ideology? were presented in the framework of Marwa Arsanios solo exhibition of the same name during the City of Women festival in 2018 in collaboration with the Škuc Gallery.

In this panel, we will explore diverse perspectives on the concepts of care and concern. Artist Isabel Carvalho will emphasize the role of community as a space for integration, acceptance, and a sense of belonging. Together with her, we will reflect on ways to support this process. Alongside Professor Jasmina Husanović, we will analyse the connections between art, academic environment, and activism. Additionally, with Dr. Sascia Bailer, a feminist researcher, we will explore the relationship between curatorial care and promoting gender equality. Scholar Magda Buchczyk will explore the interplay between heritage practice and the contested ideas and practices of care by focusing on the specific case of Mediterranean wetlands.

During the afternoon session, we will move to Krater Park where the seminar will continue to weave together its propositions and pose new epistemological challenges based on the exercise of political imagination. First, Amelie Aranguren will presenet the outcomes of the workshop creating a space to get to know some of the cases of peri-urban producers and self-organised groups of consumption, stemming from direct sales based in Ljubljana. Afterwards, Graham Bell Tornado will perform the ritual of founding Krater Park as a Post Industrial Natural Queer (P.I.N.Q.) Park, in an eco-queer re-appropriation of national parks’ founding culture. Instead of giving rise to dynamics of domination over nature, they will inaugurate a space where sexual, biological, and cultural diversity can be protected. The session will close with Liliana Zeic’s workshop in which participants will be invited to engage in a state of collective interspecies sisterhood and deep connection with the plant environment, in which some of the fundamental ideas addressed during the previous sessions will be brought together.