October 15, 2011 § 5 Comments
A Feminist Tea Party invites you to attend Lady Parlour Games, with Mikki Halpin of Feminist Killjoy Quarterly and Jennifer Dalton, in conjunction with Jennifer Dalton’s exhibition Cool Guys Like You
Thursday October 20, 6-9pm, Winkleman Gallery, 621 W 27th St. NYC
Please join us for an evening of cocktails and games. No ladyparts required.
thought your followers might be interested in two podcasts about some of the feminist art highlights of PST: Judy Chicago, and performance art.
Chicago here:http://adobeairstream.com/art/judy-chicago-talks-feminism-the-dinner-party-and-through-the-flower/
LACE Ed Carol Stakenas here:http://adobeairstream.com/art/carol-stakenas-of-lace-talks-performance-art-in-southern-california/
thank you Ellen! I really wish I could be there to hear Judy Chicago speak, but Caitlin and I won’t be in California yet. I’ll be sure to check out these podcasts.
Nice meeting you both yesterday. Hope you enjoy Doin It in Public! I blogged, as promised, and actually asked you two some questions there. Hope to continue the conversation, Alex
Thanks Alex! We’ve responded to your questions on your blog.
And my responses to you:
I appreciate your comments, Caitlin, about reenactment and nostalgia, and they make a lot of sense to me. There is always the problem of imitative fallacy in such parodic acts, so that they end up being read more as celebration than critique. So perhaps decking the room with the items you already do, and ALSO other ironic-homages to fifties housewives would make your critique more apparent (on top of the books you currently use).
Suzanne, I mention drag for a few reasons, the most obvious being that gay men often perform a version of the character you’ve taken on, but with much more obvious irony (in that they are men, but also in that they are in funnier, over-the-top costumes), but also in that they enact the position with a kind of camp that is harder for women to pull off when they are performing critical versions of themselves. I think that feminist thinking here on the masquerade would be of great use to you. But given your thinking about the role of anti-racism in feminism, and also in your performance, a tweaking of your project to mark the draginess of race, and not just femininity, might also be an interesting move.
This leads me to speculate that the rub between irony and sincerity is not always clear in the piece (a line I find VERY hard to think through) given your very sincere and necessary project of turning younger women on to feminism and its history.