Promise No Promises!

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 has led to the creation of different networks between platforms and members of the Roma community. Silvia Agüero Fernández writes in one of her articles published in Pikara Magazine: “The Roma insurrection is the ultimate resistance to the established system, it is my alternative to a world, to a system of thought, economy and society that others have established”.

Together with Nicolás Jiménez Gonzalez, Silvia Agüero Fernández runs the project Pretendemos Gitanizar el Mundo, a valuable archive in process where they create and share a counter-narrative to fight structural and cultural anti-gitanismo. As a specific form of racism against Roma, anti-gitanismo is not only condoned but also trivialized. Their project proposes an in-depth study through numerous articles of scientific, historical and cultural popularization, while also providing support for institutions and associations that want to fight against anti-Roma harassments.

In the particular case of Romany women, anti-gitanismo is merged with structural patriarchy. As Silvia Agüero Fernández tells, feminism has always existed among Romany women. It is born and lived in the kitchens of homes and within families. It is a box of tools, values and struggles that are transmitted from women to women through emotional proximity and by ways of living together. The leader’s narrative, omnipresent in feminism, creates a herstory that makes invisible the work and daily forms of resistance of so many women throughout history. Within those forms there has been the feminism of Romany women for centuries, which is an ongoing collective anti-racist and anti-capitalist resistance.

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 of ways Muslim women think and act around the world. When feminism is concerned only with a few women, then it ceases to be liberating and becomes a tool of oppression for a large number of women. One of the many clichés that Mariam Khan and all the authors of the book dismantle is the moral superiority of the secular West over religious cultures. Islam as a religion that empowers women is a constant affirmation in the book, which the authors demonstrate with historical facts and practices.

The conversation with Mariam Khan took place at the end of October 2020. She was in London and Sonia Fernández Pan in Berlin. With the arrival of autumn and the glaring increase of infections and deaths, most European governments have imposed a second lockdown. The state of vigilance and mutual accountability that has emerged during the pandemic is however not new to Muslim women in Western Societies. The Western Gaze is a form of violence that police their bodies and exoticizes them, misrepresenting Muslim women as submissive and equal to each other whereas the reality is very much different. Now that we all have to wear a mask in public for reasons of health and mutual care, a necessary question that reappears is: Why are some reasons more legitimate than others to cover or uncover faces or bodies? "It's not about the Burqa" is a book that brings up the present and past of Muslim women in the British context, but also their future. The fight for women’s right is to fight for all women’s right and all their different communities. Making it real may be complicated, but understanding it is the first step that has to be taken.

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 and to survive? The struggles in which many concepts and many anonymous bodies are involved in are extremely important. When we think about the concept of Feminism, it becomes violent and discriminatory when there is no recognition of the enormous differences between bodies and the lives lived by those bodies. Feminism, if not perceived as intersectional, is in danger of producing oppressive and exclusionary paradigms. Capitalism needs our bodies to be healthy and functioning in order to be able to continue working for it, but it does not offer the same support to all people. Race, class and gender are some of the many elements to consider when we think about health. However, it’s also true that past struggles for better and more accessible health systems provide experiences and strategies from which we can learn in the present. The rather pessimistic spirit in thinking about the future was nevertheless accompanied by a certain festive spirit thanks to the emergence of nightlife and dance culture during our conversation. The genealogy, bodies and culture that techno music produces are different from those of other music realities. In fact, each type of music shows that there is not one homogenous dance community, but many communities made up of different bodies and experiences. The same applies to Feminism. We should never forget that there is always more than one community and that communities exist in continuous transformation and differences.

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 denies the sensual and pleasurable dimension of bodies. One that does not include sex workers and their concerns within its political agenda. But can any “feminism” that does not take into account all the factors of the complex and effective relationship between privilege and oppression even be called “feminism”? What is the meaning and use of essential points in a performative reality? The Gaze, written in capital letters, which Melanie Jame Wolf incorporates into her text as a kind of character within her story, also infiltrates feminism in the manner of a judge who determines the validity or appropriateness of those bodies that are not only gazed at but are continually surveilled – and at the same time, surveilling themselves and others. But just as scripts in conversations exist to deviate from them, so do social scripts exist to be renewed and consequently refused.

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 objects, perhaps this encounter between Sonia Fernández Pan and Ana Garzón Sabogal could be a toolbox full of acts of survival in constant motion.

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 violence of structural racism.

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 expand their meaning beyond the commonplace and romantic ideas which seem to be even more predominant in the current situation of personal and political isolations.

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 Ran Zhang took place in Paris by the end of January 2020, on the occasion of her exhibition Resolution of Traits at the independent space L'ahah. The virus that had caused a new disease, first in Wuhan and China, was now appearing in France and by then no longer an alien entity but instead becoming an European reality. Despite the many speculations we shared in Paris, neither of them imagined that the outcome would be a global pandemic and confinement. But already then they felt the awakening of Western prejudices about the Chinese community.

The second conversation with Ran took place in April 2020 in Berlin during two different moments. She was staying at home in her room in Neukölln and Pan was staying in Kreuzberg, connected within the digital-turn of human relations at a time when contact between bodies is forbidden-but-not-forgotten and when time seems to have stopped to move forward more quickly. This conversation with Ran is an attempt to approach the current situation from her personal experience, from her situated knowledge and from her enormous and sparkling ability for story-telling: Viruses, molecular structures, prejudices, feminist prejudices, food markets, factories, systems of work, care and affection, the couple and the coupledom, confinement, hyper-productivity, turnings and turnouts shaped this in-between conversation. Our wish: to add more flavors to a reality that seems to be stuck in one single flavor.

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 Niedermeier, Heather Phillipson, Mathilde Rosier, Lena Maria Thüring.

In this episode artist Rossella Biscotti presents her body of works dealing with ancient storytelling and both biological and psychological phenomena like growth and resilience.

Artist Rossella Biscotti’s (born in Molfetta, Italy, lives and works in Brussels and Rotterdam) artistic oeuvre encompasses videos, photographs and sculptural work. She uses montage as a gesture to reveal individual narratives and their relation to society. In her cross-media practice, cutting across filmmaking, performance and sculpture, she explores and reconstructs obscured moments from recent times, often against the backdrop of state institutions. In the process of composing her personal encounters and oral interrogations into new stories, the site of investigation tends to leave its mark on her sculptures and installations. By examining the relevance of the recovered material from a contemporary perspective, Biscotti sensibly weaves a link to the present.

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 Niedermeier, Heather Phillipson, Mathilde Rosier, Lena Maria Thüring.

In this episode Neha Choksi, Sophie Jung and Tanya Busse and Emilija Škarnulytė (New Mineral Collective) are in conversation with Quinn Latimer and Chus Martínez about ways of dealing with violence and aggression both on artistic and institutional level.

Artist Sophie Jung (lives in London and Basel) works across text, sculpture and performance, navigating the politics of representation and challenging the selective silencing that happens by concluding. Her focus is on disrupting dominant scripts through subversively introduced tremors. She employs humor, shame, the absurd, raw anger, rhythm and rhyme, slapstick, hardship, friendship and a constant stream of slippages. Her sculptural work consists of bodies made up of both found and haphazardly produced attributes and defines itself against the dogma of an Original Idea or a Universal Significance. Her writing is done in an intersectional-feminist spirit of écriture feminine.

Artist Neha Choksi lives and works in Los Angeles and Bombay, India. Working in performance, video, installation, sculpture, and other formats, she disrupts logic by setting up poetic and absurd interventions in the lives of everything—from stone to plant, animal to self, friends to institutions. Involving a confluence of disciplines, in various formats, often collaboratively and in unconventional settings, she allows in strands of her intellectual, cultural and social contexts to revisit the entanglements of time, consciousness, and socialization.

Artists Tanya Busse (born in Moncton, NB, Canada, lives in Tromsø, Norway) and Emilija Škarnulytė (born in Vilinus, Lithuania, lives in Tromsø, Norway) are New Mineral Collective (NMC), a platform that looks at contemporary landscape politics to better understand the nature and extent of human interaction with the Earth’s surface. As an organism, NMC infiltrates the extractive industry with alternative forces such as desire, body mining, and acts of counter prospecting.