Open call for feminist artists to join knowledge exchange platform. By to kosie

The artist in residence to kosie opens call to participate in the Feminist Artists Exchange Platform, a theoretical/practical space aimed at beginning artists and art school students of any type of visual art interested in implementing feminist theory in their artistic practice with the support of a small community.

Feminist artists exchange platform

“We live in the times of global crisis. The pandemics made weaknesses of our political systems clearly visible. Can art give any proposals, any ideas that could bring change? Learning from contemporary feminism, we should try to build a community/communities that would make small steps towards the change. Because the form of the change should come from the grassroots, from us, from our experience in the real world and from our attempts to communicate them between us. We, as young artists, can offer creative, sensitive and intuitive suggestions, proposals, visions that will inspire our viewers to act differently and bring the change with their activities as well. We, as young artists, should be responsible for the space that is given for us to communicate publicly, to influence others.

What I’m offering is a Feminist Artists Exchange Platform. I’m not going to be there for you to teach. We are going to be there for each other, to learn from each other. To listen and to propose, to bring positive, not negative, to bring support, not judgement. The form of the platform will depend on all of us. Together, we will develop the system of responsibilities and exchange that will be beneficial for all of us. The general form will split our activities to the theoretical part and the practical part. In the theoretical part we will read feminist texts of our choice and discuss them. I will prepare a list of proposals, but the curriculum will depend on the decisions of all. In the practical part we will implement the thoughts that inspired each of us the most into our art works. We can decide to work together or separately, create small groups, duos or develop further our individual practices. We will follow each other’s processes and support each other in our projects. The medium will depend on our individual choices as well.

The program of Feminist Artists Exchange Platform will be spread in the duration of 4 months (April-July 2021). We will meet twice a month for 3-4 hours depending on our needs. The program is thought in a way that will give us time for preparing properly for each session, for reading, thinking, feeling, experiencing and testing various art strategies. There will be a small budget for materials, approximately 100€ per person, depending on the final amount of the participants. The meetings will be held mainly in English. Communicative level of language skills is required.

Contemporary feminism will bring us a base focused on building the future from the grassroots upwards, accepting the chaos and constant change, understanding technology’s and nature’s role in our lives, questioning and rethinking social structures. The topics will be: nomadic subjectivity, gender, sexuality, body, power, post-capitalism, exclusion, intersectionality.

The theoretical base will be a beginning for opening our minds towards fluid, feminine forms, for ugliness, chaos, failure, error, abject. Through discussing our thoughts, ideas, sketches, materials, try-outs, prototypes, we will find ways for implementing personal/political issues in the artistic practice.”

to kosie.

Open Call

For artists and art students who are active in the art field of any kind of visual art interested in implementing feminist theory into their artistic practice with support of small community. The plan is to create a group of 7-10 people.

To apply for participation send one pdf file in English to address tokosie(at)yahoo.com with email title ‘FAEP’. The file should include:

– brief description of your art practice and motivation of taking part in the workshop (max 1page text)
– 5 photos of your work
– cv

Deadline: March 15th, 2021.

Covid-19 precautions

We plan to meet in person in a quite big space in which we can keep distance, but in case of the general situation in Barcelona going worse, we can switch to online meetings and individual consultations.

Safer spaces guidelines will be proposed and discussed during the first meeting but for clarity: no violence, harassment, or discrimination of any kind (racism, sexism, ableism, classism, homophobia, transphobia or cis-sexism, no body commentary) will be accepted.

Facilitator

to kosie, Helsinki based Polish artist, 1986
Long term resident at Hangar, Barcelona
tokosie.tumblr.com

to kosie is a visual artist based in Helsinki, creating mixed media sculptures, videos and performances, working on feministic thought and implementing it in fluid sculptural forms. The nickname ‘to kosie’ and use of pronoun ‘it’ is a gesture of giving up on the privilege of being a person. to kosie considers engagement with the materials as a base of an interaction, which remains are usually sculptures and videos.

Recently she’s been working on a long term project called ‘octopussy’. It is a proposal for new social structure based on feministic thought (Rosi Braidotti, Laurie Penny), it’s inspired by uniqueness of octopian’ body and it’s going towards possible fluid / feminine forms, open for conversations, exchange. The project is focused on mixed media sculptures representing bodies in change. Repressed with postcapitalism, crawling towards connection with material reality, looking for horizontal relations with others, accepting chaos of constant movement.

to kosie’s works have been exhibited at the Main Project of 6th Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, Pori Biennale III, The Festival of Political Photography in Helsinki, Gallery Labirynth in Lublin, Rietveld Pavilion in Amsterdam, Snehta Residency in Athens and many more.