November Resident: Olga Kopenkina (BY/US)
18 November, 5pm – lecture: New Feminism and Media
RITS School of Arts, Antoine Dansaertstraat 70, Brussels 1000
21 November, 8.30pm – screening: Feminism is Politics!
Beursschouwburg, Auguste Ortsstraat 20-28, Brussels 1000
Olga Kopenkina is the second Kran Film Resident who will pay a ten-day visit to Brussels in order to explore Flemish video and film archives, meet film professionals, give a lecture at RITS School of Arts, and organize a screening programme at Beursschouwburg Brussels. Kopenkina’s residency programme is developed around the theme of gender. She will be exploring the relationship between gender and cinema and will question how women-filmmakers respond to the various living conditions shaped by capital, state politics and war; how they ultimately contribute to discussion about significance of an organized action and creation of feminist activist networks through the use of film technologies and internet.
Lecture: New Feminism and Media
The lecture will depart from early feminist critique, which responded to the lack of action in feminist and women’ groups in the late 70s and 80s, its limited and self-referential discourse, and focus on works by women-filmmakers and artists who endeavoured to give the film and media-based art a palpable sense of energy, driven by visions of radical action. Filmmakers like Alice Guy (France), who pioneered feminist film, and Lizzie Borden (USA), female members of Paper Tiger TV activists and contemporary cyber-feminists introduced the new ways for feminist critique and possibility of organized action through the use of media technologies – from independent TV stations and pirate radio of the early times to contemporary internet. Contemporary media-based feminists artists explore the potential of new feminism to attack, to act from the antagonistic position within the wider social and political terrain, responding to various living conditions, cultural and material productions from women living in different parts of the world. Focusing on artistic and political lessons inherited from the past, contemporary feminist filmmakers and cyber-feminists propel them to the new circle of formation and activation of political subjectivity.
Screening: Feminism is Politics!
Drawing the references to history of feminism and queerness, the film program embraces the wide spectrum of art and activism: from performance and video to documentation of direct action, redefining notions of “riot”, revolt, autonomy, emancipation, revolution, and other concepts that shape radical feminist philosophy.
1. Lana Čmajčanin, Female President. 2005, 3,17 min.
2. Iqaa the Olivetone, Locusts, Detroit, 2008, 11,27 min. Produced by Invincible for EMERGENCE Media.
3. Pussy Riot, Punk Prayer – Mother of God, Chase Putin Away! 2012, 2 min.
4. Bureau of Melodramatic Research, Protect Your Heart at Work. 2012, 25 min.
5. Kasja Dahlberg, Female Fist. 2006, 20 min.
+ surprise
Olga Kopenkina is Belarus-born, New York-based curator and art critic. Her work focuses both on historical and contemporary art practices within the wide spectrum of art and political expression that resulted in projects such as Sound of Silence: Art during Dictatorship, exhibition at EFA Project Space, NYC, 2012; Reading Lenin with Corporations, ongoing seminar and film production; Terror Tactics, film program at apexart, New York, 2007; exhibitions Russia: Significant Other at Anna Akhmatova Museum, St Petersburg, Russia, 2006 and Post-Diasporas: Voyages and Missions at the First Moscow Biennale, Moscow (2005). Kopenkina contributed to such publications as Art Journal, Moscow Art Magazine, ArtMargins, Manifesta Journal, Modern Painters, Afterimage, and others. She currently teaches at New York University, Steinhardt School for Arts and Art Professions, Department of Media, Culture and Communication.