 This panel on Interventions in Language and Activism brings together a wide range of work on contemporary art and social practice that aligns with or responds to the loosely organized set of principles, practices, and politics we might call feminist. What I particularly appreciate about them, collectively and individually, is that their attempt to locate contemporary feminism. A daunting task in a moment when I, and perhaps I'm dating myself here, like those feminists of a certain generation, Liz Linden and Jennifer Kennedy, reference, I've come to wonder if feminism is, if not dead, an endanger of stalling out in some ways. So I'm deeply gratified and inspired to hear a resolute no to that question in reading all of these papers. Well, these papers scan the contemporary art landscape and point to where feminism might be found in the body, in the work of particular artists, in the policies of art curators, continuities between art practitioners then and now, etc. They tend to refrain from positing what it is, which is a wise and perhaps necessary choice, leaving us with what Liz and Jen term, quote, excuse me, something even better, many, many more questions. So I have a few cursory observations to make about each of the papers in this regard, along with, how could I resist, a few questions of my own, which I offer as provocations for the discussion to follow. And actually my suggestion to the panelists is to take note of my questions, and if you're really burning to make a brief response immediately following them, we'll have that. But then I'd like to turn it over to the audience questions as quickly as possible, since we can always continue our discussion afterwards, whereas some folks in the audience may not have the luxury of that time. So first, Sasha Grayson's essay on Lucy Orte's expansive 70 by 7 project quite rightfully characterizes this work as feminist, the artist's demural on the labeled notwithstanding, but she also quite helpfully complicates what feminists might mean. For as Sasha reminds us, quote, the identity of those who need food to survive has no outside for the human community. And on the flip side, who is not implicated in the globalization of factory farming and world hunger? Still, her spectacular larger than life, self-reflexive decapably in my mind, a materialist critique of the invisibilization of the significance of that work. I have a few questions or just things that were brought up for me by reading the paper. So I thought that the observation that direct political work seems to have gone out of favor, really intriguing, and it led me to two questions. Again, as an outsider to visual art studies. And that is to what extent is that sort of shying away from direct political work and a function of the art market? These are real questions for me. I just don't know. And is it possible that this new art is not without this new seemingly apolitical work is not without politics, but that it's encoding them in new ways or along new political alliances? So that's my first question. My second question is about the Turavanesha work, because I think there's another what for that might be identified here, one that appropriately does take place within a gallery for that elite everyone that Bishop is critiquing. For what that event made legible for me when I read about it, I wasn't there, was the countless times I've been at similar events amongst the crowd of mostly white people served deliciously exotic food cooked and served by brown people. Or again, the countless times ethnicity comes to be explained or reduced to cuisine explained by or reduced to cuisine. So might we be able to complicate this binary between male, female, elite, democratizing, insular, expansive, anti or feminist by thinking about the critique made available by each piece within a broader and larger historical context? And my last question for Sasha is perhaps this is unfair, but I wonder about the possibility. This is sort of the flip side of the last question about the possibility of actual community being fostered over Orta's dinners. Community need not be harmonious, but presumably recognition of something shared, a belief, a goal and implication. Yet as we all know, it's easy to avoid points of conflict when our bellies are full and our time together is fleeting. So I suppose the larger question is why is community a productive objective or might there be other ways of envisioning relationality? I guess this question comes to mind of results of reading Professor Ko's Cogen account of Project L and the problem of queer visibility in the Korean context. The artists of Project L may have lost a certain opportunity for engagement with the wider public or maybe wider feminist public in getting booted from the festival, but especially given the medical self help spin of the larger festival, I wonder if we might not see their expulsion as a sort of blessing in disguise in that they were able to present their work in a way that actually critiqued the medicalization of non normative sexualities and allowed for specifically queer feminisms that did not emerge, pardon the pun, from biological femaleness, thus by presenting their work alongside, but not incorporated into the festival. And I realize they didn't actually coincide, but within a year or so, let's say alongside presenting their work alongside, but not incorporated into the festival. They challenged the monolithic version of feminism that the festival and other intentionally indifferent iterations of Korean feminism seek to claim it's true and unfortunate. That this schism exists, but it's precisely that tension between alternate, even competing, feminisms that keeps feminism vital in this instance, each side having to articulate and hopefully think about what is or should be included under the rubric of feminism and why. So my questions for Dong Yong are to what extent does the stance of the festival organizers represent Korean mainstream feminism with respect to queer sexualities? These are, again, real questions. I don't, these are not rhetorical questions. Okay. And my second question is, is there a concomitant intentional indifference to feminism within Korean lesbian discourse? I noticed that none of the Project L people you interviewed seem to claim the identity of feminism, at least not after their rejection from the festival, which is totally fair in that, in that context. But it's just a question for me. Okay. Elizabeth Linden's and Jennifer Kennedy's ambitious dictionary of temporary approximations and the town hall discussion it was meant to enable seems to take the idea of intentional indifference and sort of turn it on its head, an experiment that intentionally looks a scant at those linguistic and ideological log gems that so often halt progress in this area in hopes of dislodging them makes a lot of sense. But as they ask here, what kind of frame were they making? I want to applaud them for having the courage to even ask this question as it's the most important, but often the most difficult one to level at oneself. Their attempt to answer that question here tracks many of the dilemmas of contemporary feminism, perhaps nowhere better conceptualized as this and I'm quoting from their paper with so much difference in individuality inherent in its expression. How does one create a united movement? So my questions for Liz and Jen are, what do you make of this focused energy on developing the dictionary itself? Does it suggest that there is a felt need for new language? And if so, what are your thoughts about that? My second question for them is, what are the pros and cons of the town hall format for this kind of work? And my third question for them is, oh, I'm going to skip the third question. It's more for me. Okay. Okay. And so finally, I share Marisa Vignol's resistance to the neologism, post feminism, for all the same reasons she does to designate something post is to posit its demise, resolution, obsolescence, et cetera. And it seems to me, especially after reading all these papers, that it is alive and well, feminism is alive and well, and that there is an ongoing need for it in public discourse. But her call to recognize continuity is more than simply an invitation to see contemporary artists as direct inheritors of feminist art legacies. It's a charge placed on us all to, in her term, I guess she's quoting someone else, activate the archive. If we agree that feminism is not dead, then perhaps it behooves us to not sit around mourning as if it were, I'm talking to myself here, or to celebrate it only in its present or future vitality, but to educate and remind ourselves of why it's not dead yet, or and of that before that has produced what we've come to take for granted in the after. My questions for Professor Vignon are, so I agree with you about the problems of temporal sort of cordoning off of feminism that the post does, but I'm also curious about that impulse and what it's about, and how it's related to the I'm not a feminist but sort of response. If feminism has become for some people such an abject identification, then is there something possibly productive about finding a linguistic marker? I guess this sort of goes back to the dictionary question about finding a linguistic marker that denotes, if not a break, then a change from the stereotyped unappetizing contemporary construction of an earlier feminism. And my second question is, is there something different or new about these contemporary artists' engagement with the term, with the term and political category of feminism? While I totally appreciate and agree with Marissa's suggestion that we view a mayor's work in relation to, say, Miriam Shapiro's or even Karen Finley or somebody like that, the world has gone through some quite dramatic changes since that earlier moment in feminist art. War, globalization, war and globalization have become organizing principles at the ground level in a way that I think was different. Not that those concepts didn't exist in the 60s, 70s and 80s, but I think it's, I would argue that it's a little different now. So rather than seeing these developments as parallel to a trajectory that is globalization as a parallel to a trajectory of feminism, what happens if we think of them both within the same frame, literally, as I think somebody like a mayor is trying to do? So lastly, Elizabeth and Jennifer asked in their town hall discussion, what does feminism look like today and seem to have been concluded that instead of an answer, they were left with more questions. But I want to suggest that perhaps that is an answer in and of itself. Perhaps feminism now, its politics, its aesthetic strategies, its very existence is an open question in the very best sense of that phrase. In other words, if we were to consider feminism, not as a specifically demarcated political agenda, but as a mode of questioning hierarchies of power and of how we and others are, I missed a word in here, and of how we and others are, what would happen if we were to consider feminism, not as a specifically demarcated political agenda, but as a mode of questioning hierarchies of power and of how we and others are implicated in such structures. I admit I chuckled when I read of the impulse to meta question that Liz and Jennifer spoke of as it struck me as clearly appropriate for a feminist gathering. And I say that with love and some self-chiding, but also deep respect for the contribution to the project of structural critique that feminism has brought us is bringing us will I hope continue to bring us. Questions in and of themselves don't change anything, of course, but they do invite an answer or at least a conversation and thereby create a relation. It's a form of openness that does not necessarily presume passiveness. A question asks for something, information, action, reparation, perhaps assistance, but it may also and often it simultaneously does offer those very same things. So with that, I will leave it to the panel and to you. Thanks. So I guess I'll first open it up briefly to the panel to see if they respond to any of that or if they have questions for each other and then we'll turn it over to the floor. Okay. Well, to start, I first wanna make a little disclaimer about Tira Venizia's work, which I actually think is much more complex than it's reduced to in Boryau's theory. And so I think what I was critiquing was actually more of the way the theoretical construct of relational aesthetics takes politics out, but that I don't actually believe that most of the work does. So that's one of the things that it's about why is a theory of art more preferred that takes politics out or the possibility of political change off the table and actually prefers the idea of a loosey-goosey aesthetics of politics. So for me, that was a really important thing. And in terms of the possibility of actual community across those tables, I think it's really hard to say and I think that one of the things that I think is most important sort of across this frame of new feminism, if we, maybe we'll use new feminism instead of post-feminism or is the idea of inadequate solutions and that's something like from Gayatri Spivak. So inadequate solutions saying that I know I can't fix this completely. I can't, I'm not gonna change world distribution or make everybody get along, but if you can create specific small local moments and gestures and something comes out of that and there's a little spark, that that's very feminist. Thanks for the beautiful questions and probably I agree about some of the comments that you made about the probably the shift. I mean, in general sense, the shifting definition of what is being feminist and also as both politics as well as the stands. Also your suggestion and as well as insinuation of how to look at this relationship between the feminism as well as a lesbian activism or lesbian feminism. This is really complicated. If you just look at the the erratic from the theoretical perspective, it's really complicated relationship, but also instead of focusing on the conflicts, we can actually think about more positive contribution that the lesbian firms can do it for either from the activist standpoint of you as well as the theoretical standpoint of you. But specifically related to the questions, I'm not so sure. I mean, first of all, you have to define what is the general feminist stands in the feminist organizations in Korea. It's almost difficult, impossible to find and as well situate the relationship between lesbian feminism and feminist organization in Korea in general. I just wanted to highlight some moments. Of course, there's a problem for me to work with one example and try to find some theory because I have to work within this of frameworks. Like keep on saying I'm doing too much into it all. But there's some kind of common problem that that's all I can imply. So I can't really properly answer the questions, but I agree with you or some of the comments. But at the same time, I wanna highlight that why I'm doing this despite all great theories and how this whole gender theories and career theories open up the questions about identity politics. We still ignore this group of women. I mean, I started to write about because I was very moved with accidental, you know, encounters with them. I mean, they're not clear about the theories. They actually criticize feminism. But at the same time, along with the feminism, they're not really quite sure about their political positions. But what really moves me most is that we don't have enough space for them to discuss about it. I mean, it's still really their voices really on the back of somewhere. I mean, they're all very active feminists, but they can't really bring up that issues of lesbian to the foreground. I mean, we always oftentimes, it's good to open our discussion within the feminist discourses. But I always see their kind of almost emotional yearning to be included and to be discussed. So I, after writing the dissertation about something that's totally influenced by career theory, I just feel like, you know, in terms of identity politics, I have to do something about activism, something that I, something really coming out of my personal encounters with them. You know, that's a quite interesting experience for me. So I wanted to do something about it. Thank you for your comments. I briefly wanted to note though, when Liz and I, both of us came across individually and sometimes at the same time in the same experience, the charge that feminism is over, that wasn't necessarily put forth by a specific generation, an older generation, but various generations. I just wanted, I wanted to make that note because it's important to me at the event and in future projects that we are trying to work, although our interest isn't thinking about feminism in a way that isn't so tightly tethered to past moments, we're interested in a model of peership that is transgenerational, that thinks about community through shared experience and so on, which is really important to the project. And I think to, you know, establishing what feminism is. So I just wanted to make that note. Well, so you also asked about if there was a felt need for a new language. And I think, well, I can't say definitively yes or no, but there were definitely some voices, some participants for whom the new language was really appealing, I mean, a new language. And I think it's sort of telling Jen and I, prior to doing the sort of larger public event at the Whitney, we did a small sort of trial run with some of our friends and colleagues at the ISP and it was definitely telling that afterwards a number of people came up to me and said, yes, lived practice, I'm gonna use it, you know? And we thought, oh God, no, like what have we done? This is really, really not what our intention was. And yet there is something quite sort of liberating to be able to invent things that feel organic to you. The question is how do you share them then? And in terms of the town hall model, you were just, it appealed to us because it was a sort of non-hierarchical way to initiate a discussion with a group of strangers, basically. It sort of acknowledged that there was some unified field, i.e. that you were all from that town, but there was no sort of singular voice. I'll make just one last quick comment. I'll go through and thank you again. But just a comment on the word post. This is nothing new in the history of arts. I mean, certainly it's come around with post-depressionism, post-modernism, post avant garde. It gets added on and has been added on by art historians and critics over the years. And so I think that that does show that there is this impulse to categorize. So you come up with these ontological divisions and there is, I see one positive side in that and that it gives us a grounding to stand from and it gives us something that we can work off of. But as long as we recognize that there can then be open boundaries around them, that we can activate, we can have activism, we can move between those, then I think that's what's the most important thing here. And I see that as we shift, as we change with our generations of artists that are practicing now, there is continuity. And I like that reference back to what has come before, but at the same time we are under these shifting grounds and different boundaries and global movements and that can open up from a technological standpoint, from everybody on the internet across the globe, to wanting communities, to one across different countries. And so Amer's work, which I gave a very cursory exploration of today and which is so nuanced and has deserved all of the scholarship and more that will come on her practice, is one that brings in so many more issues. I mean, for example, the veiling. She has that background that is on the background. So, now it's come there too. Yes, so activate, move, produce, yes, that's the bottom line. Do you probably have any questions? Hi, I'm Elizabeth Sackler and I want to thank all of you because I think they were just a wonderful group of papers and I think you should get a great big round of applause. And to tell each of you and the panelists this afternoon that this is precisely why the Center for Feminist Art exists so that we can have a place to discuss, to engage and to probe into the future and our futures. And Karen, thank you for your remarks because I happen to agree with you that I think the answer is in the questions about what it is and not knowing and I don't know that we will ever come to that moment short of a revolution and living in a matriarchy when I was discussing the Center for Feminist Art six years ago with the museum. And for one moment the question came up by the director and deputy director about the use of the word feminist art instead of women's art. And we had a discussion, a brief discussion, and I said, we're not going to solve what it means and what it is here. In fact, the whole point of having a center is to make a place available because I see feminism and feminist art as a work in progress. And it is what it is in the moment and hopefully it will continue to embrace people and ideas and change the way in which we function as a culture and that women will have parity and more wall space. So I apologize that I don't have a question for you but I want to say thank you very much. Thank you. And it's like a little dream. For me it's a dream come true to hear you. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. I'm Linda Stein and I've enjoyed this panel very much. And following up on what Marissa said, would you agree, all of you, that we should acknowledge that the use of the word post is kind of an elitist term to the extent that it's embraced by intellectual, academic, media communities and that there's this vast terrain of people who are still struggling, we must say, with the issues of feminism and homophobia or queer theory and racism. And we're talking about it, should we use post or not post, but we're talking in a small community and we should acknowledge the other. It's a question though, do you agree? Oh, yeah, no, absolutely and thank you. Gesundheit. I think this is what gets to the heart of my project is that it's language and what is language used for and language in many respects is used to uphold certain social conventions. And so if the use of post-feminism is taken on by who we might see as those in the upper classes intellectual elites, those who have access to mass media and can proclaim their voices in spaces where others cannot, then what is their agenda in doing so? Their agenda as I see it is to uphold their particular positions in society because once you put the word post-feminism out there, post-racial out there, you're saying that we don't need to have to deal with all these other people down there anymore because we're up here on our kind of high horse standard. So for me it does erase those voices down there and it is completely a class issue and a gender issue in so many respects and they are completely intertwined in all of those. So it's a real political activism to take on and to not even deny but to reject this word post-feminism because what post-feminism does is to deny the history and the voices of everyone who has come before and of everyone who is currently living. So by rejecting and saying that we don't want that term at all, it's not that there's just going to be a denial, it's going to be a refusal of it, then that is complete political activism for me and I hope that that's what does then open up those voices and continue that dialogue and allow people those spaces, so yes. Yeah, if I may add to that, I think one of the problems with post-feminism and the question of whether we replace the word feminism is that the power of language, it gives the implication that the issues taken up by feminism are finished and they're completely not and I think that that's a real danger that has happened and that we've achieved 20% of what the goal of the 60s set out and that's just enough for people to not be really, really angry and so they can sort of hold back and I think the power of language that we have to sort of remember is that it's discursive and so if feminism, if the phrase I'm not a feminist but is giving up that power to redefine it, to say that the powers that be, the patriarchal powers that I want to put forth post-feminism have also made feminism something that women who would benefit from feminism reject and so if we as feminists can both claim feminism and redefine it in a way that's completely claimable, that that's a very powerful act too. Because once I ask my students, well, what do you think feminism means? Then they say, oh, oh, I wasn't thinking along that. I'm just, I'm not that. Oh, okay, maybe I am that and that's what I am interested in. So it's discussions, talking, getting out there. Try, again, this impulse towards categorization, what are we? Are we next generation? Are we something? I find myself situated. I'm 31, I studied in my 20s with Norma Browdy and Mary Garrett who are in their, well, I shouldn't share you just, but towards the end of their academic careers but are still prolific writers as well. So I was so engrossed with them as people, as writers, as theorists, that I don't feel like there was any separation between us as just being together in that way. But I do recognize that there are a lot of new issues that have come to play in my evolution from the mid-90s to today as well that are very different than some of the issues that they were facing in the 1960s and 70s as well. So, and then there's also that divide that has come up between second wave feminist, essentialism versus constructionism and third wave is a getting into theory. Well, I myself practice theory, I practice art, I practice a number of different things and so I've always seen this sort of combination between all of them, so I'm very intergenerational. That's what I like to push for but I'm certain that other people have opinions. Well, I just wanted to jump in. Something that Jen was speaking about earlier is really Mary Kelly's concept of generations which is that generations are built, not on parody in age but parody in experience and so the generational grouping looks different in her concept that I think it does in the traditional one and that sort of messes with the wave concept as well. I'm not quite sure that I think waves are necessarily unuseful but I don't really like the word, makes it sound like surfing. But also I'm happy that somebody mentions about the second and third waves because when the initial response about the post-feminist coming out, it's not just a prestigious or prestige of patriarchical, whatever power, it's also the politics within the discourse of feminism, particularly the different groups of women. I don't really think it's just male or female problem, just that you have to consider the different ranks or different political desire within the feminist discourses. In fact, especially you mentioned about Mary Kelly and she, I mean from a certain perspective, she become established feminist artists so we have a different kind of cannons within the feminist art. So this struggle is not just between the gender, it's really within, we have to also consider really within the feminist discourses and feminist cannons of art history and criticism, important feminist theorist as opposed to probably unheard of voices. And just a last point I think problematic with that is that it's temporal and not localized and so I think we have to recognize that first generation and second generation as somebody brought up in the earlier part have a sort of Western notion and so we're definitely past that in the sense that people are dealing with different kinds of feminism in different places and I think that the wave concept probably would be difficult to handle with that.