Tag: 2008

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Gestation: a Workshop

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A collaborative performance art workshop led by subRosa and Elena Marcevska, with an interdisciplinary group of scholars, artists & activists. Combining interdisciplinary art and theater skills, we created a tourist-like map to make visible the “hidden feminist histories” of Skopje, Macedonia. This included historic and present-day concerns experienced by women of different ages and ethnic and religious backgrounds.

Sponsored by the Faculty of Communication & Media Arts, New York University Skopje, Macedonia,  June 10–19, 2008

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Look! Listen! A Week With | Out Women

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A 10-day subRosa residency in Zagreb, where different groups of people were invited to daily gatherings to address a variety of concerns, elicited through organized discussions about everyday life and political conditions. Evening salons were followed the next day by a “manifestation” in appropriate city locations.

Photos and documentation our activities were posted daily in the gallery space, along with notes about “What We Heard” and asking “What are Your Demands?”

The residency culminated in a performative feast at the Student Center Club, Teater &TD, University of Zagreb, during which participants hailed one another, unveiled a plan for a “SubVersity” and revisited the connections that were made throughout the residency.

Artist residency & salons held at WHW’s Galerija Nova. Feast performance held at Student Center Club, Teater &TD, Unversity of  Zagreb, Croatia, May 31–June 8, 2008.

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Out-Rage-Us-Joy

Out-Rage-Us-Joy

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A poetic, performative installation, commissioned for an inter-generational feminist exhibition: The Way That We Rhyme: Women, Art and Politics.  subRosa borrowed from the aesthetic forms and utopian gestures of the “Art Into Life” philosophy of Russian Constructivists, and the Wall of Respect painted in 1967 by Chicago-based black activists, to initiate discussions of feminist joy and solidarity.  Performers rode on two ‘rafts’ made from painted canvas and discarded tires and billboard materials, and invited viewers aboard.  Participants were invited to pin shout-outs to inspirational figures on paper “Cones of Respect” that were then pinned on a ‘pier post’ reminiscent of a communications tower. The project demonstrated “the way that we work” in solidarity with each other and with other women, and invokes different social movements and philosophies that influence each of us.

  • The Way That We Rhyme: Women, Art & Politics, curated by Berin Golonu, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, March 29-June 29, 2008 (catalog).

*Download templates to make your own Cones of Respect (please send us photos!).

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Cell Track: Mapping the Appropriation of Life Materials

Cell Track is a flexible-scale wall installation and accompanying web site examining the privatization and patenting of human, animal, and plant genomes within the context of a history of eugenics. It has been exhibited alone and in combination with other subRosa projects, sometimes with site-specific content modifications. 

Cell Track draws attention to the increasing separation between the bodies that produce stem cells—and other genetic material—and the medical and pharmaceutical products derived from them.

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Maternal body cells and tissues—such as eggs, placentas, fetuses, and umbilical cord blood—have become valuable “raw materials” extracted and accumulated for emerging bio-tech industries.  This has opened new pathways for corporate science to profit from the manipulation and control of life via the privatization of DNA sequences, engineered genes, stem cell lines, transgenic organisms, and the like. Cell Track gives a historic overview of the privatization of biology while also raising the the possibility of activist, feminist-inspired experimental research and labs accessible to amateurs, artists, independent scientists, and non-profit researchers conducting research and sharing knowledge for the public good.

  • Bio-Difference: The Political Ecology, Biennale of Electronic Arts Perth, Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, Univ. of Western Australia, Sept. 12–Oct. 3, 2004
  • YOUGenics3, curated by Ryan Griffis, Betty Rymer Gallery, Art Institute of Chicago, Dec. 4–Feb. 5, 2004
  • Deliciously Disposable Earth, curated by Carolina Loyola-Garcia, Three Rivers Arts Festival Gallery, Pittsburgh, PA, Jan. 17–Feb 22, 2008 (catalog)
  • Soft Power. Art and Technologies in the Biopolitical Age, curated by Maria Ptqk. Amarika Project at Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain. Fall, 2009
  • BPLTC I: Cellular Control, curated by Eliane Ellbogen, Eastern Bloc, Montreal, Sept. 24–Oct. 14,  2015
  • Eugenic History of Southern Agriculture with subRosa and curated by Atlanta Anti-University at Murmur Gallery, Sept 12-13, 2016 

This project has its own web site, and you can download the Cultures of Eugenics booklet that accompanies it.

 

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U-Gen-A-Chix

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Originally staged inside the student center of a large public university, U-Gen-A-Chix engaged students directly in critical conversations about eugenics as it relates to contemporary genetic engineering of humans, animals, and plants. Tandem performance booths were set up in a high-traffic area: one dispensing information on human egg donation and Assisted Reproductive Technologies, and the other offering taste tests of chicken-flavored GMO biscuits. After taste-testing the biscuit, students gave live video interviews about their willingness to eat genetically engineered foods if they enhanced energy performance during exams, and offered their opinions about the widespread use of GMOs, and related biological and social eugenic tendencies. (Note: This performance has been re-staged under several different titles, with variations in the set-up, emphasis, and audience participation in each case).

  • “U-Gen-A-Chix,” YOUGenics2: Exploring the Social Implications of Genetic Technologies, Southwest Missouri State University, Springfield, Oct. 2, 2003.
  • “Express Choice,” Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, November 7, 2005.
  • “U-Gen-A-Chix,” Raw Symbiosis: Animals_Nature_Culture, 14th International Festival of Contemporary Arts—City of Women, Galerija Skuc, Ljubljana, Slovenia, October 13, 2008 (catalog).

Download the Cultures of Eugenics booklet from our refugia web space.

The earliest version of this performance—“US Grade AAA Premium Eggs,” Bowling Green State University, Ohio, April, 2002—did not include the biscuit-tasting activity, but it did feature its own web site.