suzanne van rossenberg

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.What could a feminist art currency look like?

.Diversiteit en de Wmo

.Fragmentation of perception / perception of fragmentation

.Queer art is about creating the possibility to say no to the dominant hetero-normative economic and political structures of art. Or yes. But to at least write a story about it that replaces an older one.

.Patricia Cornflake

.Zonder titel of een verhaal over feministische kunst

Queer art is about creating the possibility to say no to the dominant hetero-normative economic and political structures of art. Or yes. But to at least write a story about it that replaces an older one.

Text of my paper in the session Fragmentation of perception / perception of fragmentation

When I was once asked to write an article about feminist art for a feminist magazine, I ended up writing a short fictional story about the feminist art works of my friends. The process of recapping my thoughts, reading feminist theorists, taking quotes and writing, was supposed to end in an essay or short informative article. Instead, to say something truthful about feminist art I needed to make my writing obvious lies. I hope that today’s “fictional” framework will enable me to tell you something truthful about my queer art.

For finishing my degree in Fine art I made drawings and watercolours of the Hooglandse Kerk, a gothic church here in Leiden. After reading Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own I came up with the title ‘A Room with a Lesbian View’ and after a while I could not resist painting or writing the title on the works. In the exhibitions I installed all the 93 works I made — all the good, bad, beautiful, ugly and okay ones.

What was the reason to label my art lesbian, besides I thought it was unbelievably funny to write the word lesbian on art? In the work I made a link between the repetition of drawing and painting (the construction of art criteria) and gender performativity as described by Judith Butler.
“That the power regimes of heterosexism and phallogocentrism seek to augment themselves through a constant repetition of their logic, their metaphysic, and their naturalized ontologies does not imply that repetition itself ought to be stopped –as if it could be.” (J. Butler in ‘Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Thinking Gender’, 1990, p. 42)
I drew and painted a lesbian narrator who claimed the impossibility of a neutral position of the viewer, a neutral gaze, and sought possibilities to subvert the repetition of gender roles. I constructed a new story.
“Cyborg imagery can suggest a way out of the maze of dualisms in which we have explained our bodies and our tools to ourselves. It means both building and destroying machines, identities, categories, relationships, space stories.” (D.J. Haraway in ‘A Cyborg Manifesto: Science Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century’ in ‘Simians, Cyborgs, and Women, The Reinvention of Nature’, 1990, p. 181)
Explicitly constructing a lesbian artist incorporated my thought of when calling myself an artist, to at least undermine stereotypical gender roles that bothered me as an artist and as a lesbian. I applied my desire to be a painter as a methodology of painting. It was science fiction.

Whether the viewer concludes A Room with a Lesbian View is bad art, a red herring or a beautiful piece of subversion, two things are obvious: The work didn’t change the art structures in which it had been exhibited and called good or bad. Secondly, I did not pursue a career as a painter.

Trans / gender is a term that Nina Höchtl and I used in 2003 and 2004 for a symposium and publication. At this moment it is a website that functions as a platform for artistic and scientific researchers who work with a wider interpretation of gender and address queer and trans / gender topics. It got a honourable mention in a competition for digital art by women and on another occasion it was part of a cyberfeminist exhibition in Vienna. So, did our platform become a piece of feminist art? And if so, did it tackle the question why feminist art or art by women still need separate competitions and women’s exhibitions?
“As Hesse has pointed out, conservative critics argue that nothing happened during the 1970s, by which they mean nothing happened except feminist art, which yet has to receive full art-historical recognition. One reason for this is that the feminist art “movement” was not based on style but on content. Another reason is that it is still going on.” (Lucy R. Lippard in ‘Moving Targets/Concentric Circles: Notes from the Radical Wind’ in ‘The Pink Glass Swan, Selected feminist essays on art’, 1995, p. 25)

Instead of establishing a career as a feminist artist and doing feminist exhibitions in the hope I will be paid for my art one day, I prefer to find a way to reflect on the economic and political structures in which my feminist art is constructed. What are the economic and political reasons for people to make an effort for our trans / gender website without getting paid? May we ask that from them? What other platforms offer space for trans / gender imagery and writing? What space is needed? Who is our audience and what is our aim? What does it mean to put the website in an art context? Should we bother to position ourselves cyberfeminist art historically?

In the spring of last year Francesco Ventrella asked me to do a performance in his project “No Entertainment At All!” He had seen my performative lecture based on A Room with A Lesbian View. I made another 16 drawings of the Hooglandse Kerk, entitled each of them A Room with a Lesbian View and wrote a story next to the churches. The story answered questions about who made the drawings, for whom, under what economic circumstances and with what interest. Did it matter that half the story was obvious lies to make it a better story?
The drawings had not been installed on the walls, but passed on from one visitor to the other. The viewers read that I was the starting point of this performance and that Francesco, my curator was sitting next to me. If it wasn’t for him asking me to make a work and him taking care of the space, invites and press release, I wouldn’t have been able to make this art work. We both were the author; he in the role of the curator and I in the role of the artist.
In taking accountability for the work I couldn’t not make Francesco the curator my accomplice. I tried to make the power structures between him and me, but also between the author, the artwork and the audience as transparent as possible (as art allowed me to do) in an attempt to restructure the “neutral” or “hetero-normative” reading of the drawings. I tried to make feminist art. And for what I know, Francesco nor the readers got hurt.

Through a call for queer art, I got invited to do a solo exhibition for the LesbianGayBisexualTransgender organization in Sarajevo called LOGOS. I had contact with the curator who had been assigned by LOGOS and I assume got paid to organize a series of exhibitions on queer art. During the preparation of the exhibition, I wanted to know more about their reason for the exhibition of queer art, the context, the gallery, the audiences, the funds of LOGOS and the presence of queer artists in Sarajevo. When communication about this with LOGOS didn’t start, I wrote a short fictional story that I was not coming. I thought this would get me the attention of LOGOS.
Though I had agreed to only a ticket and no honorarium, my queer art was not free of charge. My art was a currency. On their request I took the role of a “queer” artist and I gave them queer fiction; a story that instigates a conversation about the economic and political structures in which my work would be called art and queer. To me it was important that we weren’t reinforcing hetero-normative art structures.The heterosexual curator loved the story and how it subverted art structures; the queer art coordinator of LOGOS, however, obstructed the story being installed. I did put the story on my website.

Art space is safe. In art space all parties have agreed on being told lies to. The artist tells stories and spectators read it, question it, criticize it, gossip about it, make it into better stories, buy it and confirm it is art. As a businesswoman I can see how this transparency in power structures in art space can be implemented in other fields in benefit of for example sexual or cultural diversity. It can be quite profitable if I call it, say diversity management. The world is desperate for art space. I mean, in what other way than fiction can we give account to our desire to convince (manipulate) the other and sell our stories? But as a queer I know that as long as dominant parties in the art field refuse or are unable to position themselves and make their own fiction transparent, 21st century art (that what happens in art space) will never undermine normative art theory and criticism, the dominant fiction, and instigate renewal. I guess they don’t want change, but I do.

Together with Francesco Ventrella, Nina Höchtl and Carla Cruz I coordinate a discussion on art and feminism and trans / gender and queer activism for the European Feminist Forum. We give presentations, organize workshops and try to involve artists, curators and everybody who is interested. We share stories and our artistic strategies, from commissioned to self-funded, from invisible to commercial. We talk about money and the reason to make art. We analyze our feminist art currency in order to get a grip on if and how we can make art and criticism by women, queers and transgenders more profitable or recognized.
“It is, of course, hard to climb when you are holding on to both ends of a pole, simultaneously or alternately. It is, therefore, time to switch metaphors.” (D.J. Haraway, ‘Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and Privilege of Partial Perspective’ in ‘Simians, Cyborgs, and Women, The Reinvention of Nature’, New York, p. 188)
We actually don’t know how we as poor feminist cultural practitioners can create strategies of inclusion and diversity, and switch metaphors. The European Feminist Forum gives us a framework to exchange strategies with feminists from other fields and that’s a start. One thing is sure: our attempts and desires are not new.

Our attempts are a tribute to the feminists we like and we fictionalize their art and criticism in our stories. The construct of our desire is a song text that keeps repeating itself in our heads. We like our song. Sometimes our lines need revision, because technology has revised our desire. Sometimes people question if our words are art and we explain them politely that this is the wrong question. Soon we will make sure people pay us for this, so there is no doubt our stories are art. Maybe some day a reader falls in love with our construct of desire and starts quoting our art in her stories. We write her a note saying we like her work and we would like to financially support her. Nevertheless she outwrites us. Thank goodness, we think.

To stir hetero-normative power structures (economics and politics) that bother me, I choose to tell stories. To be able to take accountability for my queer stories, the fiction I apply on my readers, my manipulation, I need readers who like to hear my stories or criticize them, gossip about them or tell me their queer stories. The production of knowledge by queer strategies needs continuous negotiation by the author and her/his/their audience.