Promise No Promises!

Womxn in Motion: The fourth Master symposium in the series Women in the Arts and Leadership, on October 7 and 8, 2020, at the Art Institute at the FHNW Academy of Art and Design in Basel was dedicated to ideas and iterations of performance, and to the way in which its embodied practices—its bodies—are often framed or received by narrow notions not only of gender, race, class, geography, technology, and temporality, but of what performance itself means and entails: a body in motion, for example. Whose body, though, and what kind of movement? Movement, indeed, is always both, suggesting something singular—a body in tender, private effort—and something collective.Presence, proximity, voice, movement, and performative relations are the tools by which many contemporary artists, in unprecedented ways, continue to explore how to create equitable space for our ever-regulated, dully delimited bodies. This symposium served those practices, examining how performance has become the means by which so many artists and thin

Womxn in Motion: The fourth Master symposium in the series Women in the Arts and Leadership, on October 7 and 8, 2020, at the Art Institute at the FHNW Academy of Art and Design in Basel was dedicated to ideas and iterations of performance, and to the way in which its embodied practices—its bodies—are often framed or received by narrow notions not only of gender, race, class, geography, technology, and temporality, but of what performance itself means and entails: a body in motion, for example. Whose body, though, and what kind of movement? Movement, indeed, is always both, suggesting something singular—a body in tender, private effort—and something collective.Presence, proximity, voice, movement, and performative relations are the tools by which many contemporary artists, in unprecedented ways, continue to explore how to create equitable space for our ever-regulated, dully delimited bodies. This symposium served those practices, examining how performance has become the means by which so many artists and thin

Womxn in Motion: The fourth Master symposium in the series Women in the Arts and Leadership, on October 7 and 8, 2020, at the Art Institute at the FHNW Academy of Art and Design in Basel was dedicated to ideas and iterations of performance, and to the way in which its embodied practices—its bodies—are often framed or received by narrow notions not only of gender, race, class, geography, technology, and temporality, but of what performance itself means and entails: a body in motion, for example. Whose body, though, and what kind of movement? Movement, indeed, is always both, suggesting something singular—a body in tender, private effort—and something collective.Presence, proximity, voice, movement, and performative relations are the tools by which many contemporary artists, in unprecedented ways, continue to explore how to create equitable space for our ever-regulated, dully delimited bodies. This symposium served those practices, examining how performance has become the means by which so many artists and thin

Womxn in Motion: The fourth Master symposium in the series Women in the Arts and Leadership, on October 7 and 8, 2020, at the Art Institute at the FHNW Academy of Art and Design in Basel was dedicated to ideas and iterations of performance, and to the way in which its embodied practices—its bodies—are often framed or received by narrow notions not only of gender, race, class, geography, technology, and temporality, but of what performance itself means and entails: a body in motion, for example. Whose body, though, and what kind of movement? Movement, indeed, is always both, suggesting something singular—a body in tender, private effort—and something collective.Presence, proximity, voice, movement, and performative relations are the tools by which many contemporary artists, in unprecedented ways, continue to explore how to create equitable space for our ever-regulated, dully delimited bodies. This symposium served those practices, examining how performance has become the means by which so many artists and thin

Womxn in Motion: The fourth Master symposium in the series Women in the Arts and Leadership, on October 7 and 8, 2020, at the Art Institute at the FHNW Academy of Art and Design in Basel was dedicated to ideas and iterations of performance, and to the way in which its embodied practices—its bodies—are often framed or received by narrow notions not only of gender, race, class, geography, technology, and temporality, but of what performance itself means and entails: a body in motion, for example. Whose body, though, and what kind of movement? Movement, indeed, is always both, suggesting something singular—a body in tender, private effort—and something collective.Presence, proximity, voice, movement, and performative relations are the tools by which many contemporary artists, in unprecedented ways, continue to explore how to create equitable space for our ever-regulated, dully delimited bodies. This symposium served those practices, examining how performance has become the means by which so many artists and thin

The tenth and final episode of the Feminism Under Corona chapter follows a conversation with poet, playwright and theatre director Koleka Putuma. Author of the poetry book Collective Amnesia (2017) and the play No Easter Sunday for Queers (2017), she is Founder and Director of Manyano Media, a multidisciplinary project that produces and supports the work and stories of black queer artists and queer life. In a digital encounter last year, Koleka and rapper and songwriter Sho Madjozi were talking about ways of moving the poetry industry forward. Apparently, the term poetry is not related to industrial production. However, a closer look shows that poetry is indeed a part of the industry. For not only books or the materials that make them up are produced, but poetry and its authors have to negotiate continuously with contracts, copyrights, royalties, dissemination and presentation processes, etc. The work of poets and the writers encompasses not only the writing itself alone, but at the same time a constant task

The ninth episode is the result of a conversation with Christina Sharpe, scholar of English literature and Black Studies. Author of the books Monstrous Intimacies: Making Post-Slavery Subjects (2010) and In the Wake: On Blackness and Being (2016), she is currently a professor at York University in Toronto, Canada. Christina Sharpe's voice appeared earlier in several episodes of the “Corona Under the Ocean” podcast series over the course of 2020. Astrida Neimanis, Filipa Ramos or Elizabeth Povinelli would mention her work in the different conversations we had from the ocean and towards the waters. In the Wake is a book that I started to read in other people's voices but that does not let itself be translated into other people's words. It has its own different grammar that reveals and recounts grammar as a form of power. It’s an essay written in first person that tells the history and present of the black diaspora, the structural and constitutive anti-blackness of white colonialism and capitalism. During our co

The podcast Promise No Promises! opens a new chapter called “Feminisms in the Caribbean”. This series of 4 new episodes arises from personal conversations between curator and writer Sonia Fernández Pan and art practitioners from the Caribbean region. The collaboration is part of the public program of the past exhibition "one month after being known in that island" at the Kulturstiftung Basel H. Geiger with the Caribbean Art Initiative.The changeful history of the colonization of the Caribbean has left deep scars that are still present today. This is best known by artists and cultural practitioners who work in their own way on an identity of its own for the Antilles. The term “Caribbean” here is used primarily in a geographical sense to help overcoming local antagonisms between different political systems, languages and cultures, while allowing artists of all origins to exchange ideas and thus work together on a Caribbean identity. This series of podcasts aims to engage with a plurality of voices from differen

The eighth episode of the Feminism Under Corona series is the result of an audio-epistolary conversation with Silvia Agüero Fernández that took place in November 2020. On her Twitter account she introduces herself as follows: “Mother, Gitana, Mestiza, Feminist. Worker in my home. In the ghetto I discovered my Roma identity, outside the ghetto I discovered anti-Roma harassment”. The conversation was translated by Ainhoa Nadia Douhaibi Arrazola, a social educator and co-author of the book The Radicalization of Racism. Islamophobia and the Prevention of Terrorism (2019).The rules imposed during the confinement have at no point taken into account the particularities and vital needs of many idiosyncrasies and individuals. In the case of the Roma people, restrictions on their traditional professions, itinerant trade, open-air markets and artistic creation have left many without work, income, and food. And it is seriously affecting the economic freedom of Romany women. The lack of political support and understanding

The seventh episode of the Feminism Under Corona series follows a conversation with Mariam Khan, writer and editor of the book "It's not about the Burqa" (2019). This first-person anthology of essays of seventeen Muslim women's stories gives rise to a collective voice where differences are as important as similarities in creating a community of their own within the spectrum of feminism and world-making. Reading this book is like being anonymously invited to meet another community of feminists. But not in order to talk to or discuss with them, but mainly to listen and to unlearn. One way of presenting It's not about the Burqa is the final statement by its editor, Mariam Khan, in the introduction: “We are not asking for permission anymore. We are taking up space. We’ve listed a lot of people talking about who Muslim women are without actually hearing Muslim women. So now, we are speaking. And now, it's your turn to listen.”As Mariam Khan herself says, seventeen texts are only seventeen voices within the myriad

The sixth episode of Feminism Under Corona is based on a conversation with Australian-born and New York-based writer and scholar McKenzie Wark, who is known for her writings on critical theory and new media. Her latest book “Reverse Cowgirl” has been published by Semiotext(e) in 2020. Somehow, reading books starts always in reverse. We turn them over with our hands, looking for answers in advance on the back cover. However, “Reverse Cowgirl” is not a book made to satisfy questions, not even those of the author herself regarding her own biography. The following conversation with McKenzie Wark does not provide a continuation of her book. It actually starts with her reflections on Marx. Her critique of capitalism is at the same time a critique of the concepts that the critique of capitalism itself constantly produces. What kind of economy produces information that is turned into a commodity? How can we call the system we live in, which in fact parasites our bodies individually and collectively in order to expand

The fifth episode is based on a conversation with interdisciplinary artist Melanie Jame Wolf, whose work critically circulates within the flow of immaterial capital by using the performative condition and potential of our identities. The conversation between Sonia Fernández Pan and Melanie Jame Wolf incorporated some of the many elephants in the (art) room, such as social class, age, or “undisciplined” bodies in the field of performance, dance, and choreography. It was also an opportunity to talk about social networks and the inevitable perverse functioning of symbolic capital in and through them. As Melanie Jame Wolf points out, contemporary social networks enable a construction of personas similar to those that formerly used to happen in the media space of music videos. Pop is a fundamental component of her artistic and vital practice, including many attributes, gestures, behaviors, and objects associated with a type of femininity that was and still is stigmatized by some sort of feminist thinking that deni

This episode is based on a conversation with Ana Garzón Sabogal, who lives and works in Colombia. In her practice she is operating with the close encounter between art, collaborative learning, activism, and free culture, and is member of Más Arte Más Acción, together with Alejandra Rojas Giraldo. Their practice includes a feminism which stems from the critical conscience and from the understanding of feminist practices as depending on the material conditions of each context, of each community and of each person. The same applies to the political question of language, because of the enormous need to learn, to know, to listen to and share other voices during this pandemic and beyond. This is a work that Ana has done together with many people from the different collectives she is part of, translating texts into English in order to be able to share with peers and people from other cultural contexts the current thinking and making that are happening now in Colombia. If conversations could be translated into object

The title of the third episode „Radical Sociability“ refers to a recent lecture by artist, curator, writer and radio producer Lou Drago in which they were unfolding the complexity of the relationship between identity politics and the current and growing division of the Left. As a way of overcoming the divisive effects of identitarianism, they propose "to enact an intersectional affinity-based politics". In order to avoid the dynamics of the current "cancel culture", so present and constant in social networks, Lou's proposal is based on calling-in rather than calling-out. This conversation between Lou Drago and Sonia Fernández Pan navigates through issues and situations such as the binary understanding of reality, gender abolitionism, the naturalized and somehow hidden ideology of language, xeno-feminist desires, queer as a methodology and constant practice of unlearning, different personal experiences produced by the covid-19, and the different political events of the last weeks as a result of the forms of vi

The podcast Promise No Promises! now continues with a special Feminism Under Corona chapter. Over the next few months ten new episodes arise from conversations between Sonia Fernández Pan and guests from different artistic disciplines and areas of research and life practice. Beyond simple answers or solutions, this series of personal conversations is an attempt to point out different directions, feelings, expectations, sequels, and individual stories in times of the current crisis provoked by Covid-19. It is also a tool for a collectively inhabited feminism when not only gender, class, and race imbalances are reinforced, but are even becoming more visible in the current situation. The second episode entitled The Monogamy of the System is a continous exchange with author and activist Brigitte Vasallo about the consequences and instrumentalization of the pandemic by governments, corporations and people in power. In order to shake up some common considerations about love and monogamy, this conversation aims to e

The podcast Promise No Promises now continues with a special "Feminism Under Corona" chapter. Over the next few months this new series of ten episodes arises from conversations between Sonia Fernández Pan and guests from different artistic disciplines and areas of research and life practice. More than simple answers or solutions, this series of personal conversations is an attempt to point out different directions, feelings, expectations, sequels and individual stories in times of the recent crisis provoked by Covid-19. It is also a tool for a collectively inhabited feminism when not only gender, class and race imbalances are being reinforced, but are even becoming more visible in the current situation. The first episode called “A one flavor reality” is a continuation of a conversation with artist Ran Zhang about the effects and consequences of Covid-19 in a reality that is also mutating despite the confinement of our bodies being locked at home.The first conversation Pan had about Covid-19 with the artist Ra

With the third Symposium "Women on Earth" we were seeking to understand the relations between feminism and species coexistence. The issue of nature—and of all that is naturalized or deemed unnatural by hegemonic discourses and policy—is of particular importance to gender issues, as is science. But a scientific and technical approach to the climate emergency cannot be accurate without taking into consideration how gender, racial, and economic violence foster our emergent ecocides, nor by how women—often poor and Indigenous women—are overwhelmingly at the forefront of this violence as the very first recipients of. What kind of political and cultural transformation must occur to make these entanglements obvious and of vital concern? How to counter this violence in all its manifold forms? Our guests were: Rossella Biscotti, Neha Choksi, Ingela Ihrman, Institute of Queer Ecology, Sophie Jung, Lysann König, Thomas Lempertz, Agnes Meyer-Brandis, New Mineral Collective (Tanya Busse and Emilija Škarnulytė), Katrin Nie

With the third Symposium "Women on Earth" we were seeking to understand the relations between feminism and species coexistence. The issue of nature—and of all that is naturalized or deemed unnatural by hegemonic discourses and policy—is of particular importance to gender issues, as is science. But a scientific and technical approach to the climate emergency cannot be accurate without taking into consideration how gender, racial, and economic violence foster our emergent ecocides, nor by how women—often poor and Indigenous women—are overwhelmingly at the forefront of this violence as the very first recipients of. What kind of political and cultural transformation must occur to make these entanglements obvious and of vital concern? How to counter this violence in all its manifold forms? Our guests were: Rossella Biscotti, Neha Choksi, Ingela Ihrman, Institute of Queer Ecology, Sophie Jung, Lysann König, Thomas Lempertz, Agnes Meyer-Brandis, New Mineral Collective (Tanya Busse and Emilija Škarnulytė), Katrin Nie

With the third Symposium "Women on Earth" we were seeking to understand the relations between feminism and species coexistence. The issue of nature—and of all that is naturalized or deemed unnatural by hegemonic discourses and policy—is of particular importance to gender issues, as is science. But a scientific and technical approach to the climate emergency cannot be accurate without taking into consideration how gender, racial, and economic violence foster our emergent ecocides, nor by how women—often poor and Indigenous women—are overwhelmingly at the forefront of this violence as the very first recipients of. What kind of political and cultural transformation must occur to make these entanglements obvious and of vital concern? How to counter this violence in all its manifold forms? Our guests were: Rossella Biscotti, Neha Choksi, Ingela Ihrman, Institute of Queer Ecology, Sophie Jung, Lysann König, Thomas Lempertz, Agnes Meyer-Brandis, New Mineral Collective (Tanya Busse and Emilija Škarnulytė), Katrin Nie

This episode has Mark Sadler and Jörg Heiser sharing pearls of wisdom concerning the grammar of painting, architecture of philosophy and notions of freedom. And suddenly, the horizon is opening up wide. Disputaziuns Susch, from the beginning in 2017, has been a multi-disciplinary annual endeavor, bringing together scholars and artists, philosophers and authors, neuroscientists and historians – thinkers who will be asking questions and counter questions – in its 2019’s editions circling around the possibilities for universal truths versus a relative view of human temporality and finitude, rational thinking and the notion of men as ‘symbolic animals’, creating a universe of symbolic meanings, versus our being-in-the-world, perceiving the world via our relationship to time. Taking the Davos disputation in 1929, between Ernst Cassirer and Martin Heidegger, as a starting point, this ‘continental divide’ (as Peter E. Gordon called it) or ‘Weggabelung der Philosophie’ as per Henning Ritter – 90 years ahead, in Su