How are we doing (feminism)? A FMS Community Needs Check-In
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Online – RSVP <here> through Zoom.
In April 2020 when the pandemic hit, members of the Feminist Media Studio gathered to draft a living document called “Doing Feminism in the Pandemic”. The document asked what it meant to do feminism in the pandemic, how to think this moment together without succumbing to the demand to be productive despite the crisis? How to think new models of processing together that are nourishing, collective, prefigurative, and not based on keeping busy or on outputs.
We are now months away from the year anniversary of that initial reflection. We are under curfew, watching the case numbers rise. We have “accommodated” the virus, and yet we’ve had to soldier on, through classes and actions and projects and presentations. We begin 2021 with a predicament, then: we are still in a state of emergency, but we are asked to continue on as if we weren’t. What does this tension do to our research? Our creative practice? Our connections? Our everyday? What might we need to bring our projects (personal and professional) to fruition without burying the fact that #thecrisisisstillhere? What forms of care, connection, and other resources could we draw from? What might the Feminist Media Studio community do to provide such community and care for its members?
Inspired by Suzanne Kite’s Artist’s Almanac Project, this Check-In is an attempt to 1) draw up a list of needs (concrete and ethereal, prosaic and utopic); and 2) brainstorm resources and networks for meeting some of the most urgent needs in the present, ongoing crisis of 2021. It aims to produce both a list of needs (which stands itself as a statement on doing feminism in the pandemic) and an exchange of resources. Our conversation will be guided by two key questions:
1) What is one thing you don’t want to do but are doing now?
2) What is one thing you want to be doing but aren’t?
We will then try to concretize these thoughts into a list of needs and concerns to act upon as a community.
Please register here to reserve a space in this conversation. You do not need to prepare anything in advance, although you may spend some time reflecting on a few things that would lift you and your projects up over the next few months. This gathering is open to FMS members and anyone who is facing challenges in their research or creative work and is looking for community.
Access Needs
Please let us know about your access needs for participation in this gathering. Should you need live closed captioning, ASL interpretation, audio descriptions, etc, let us know ahead of time so we can arrange it.
DOING FEMINISM IN THE PANDEMIC
“Doing Feminism in the Pandemic” is conceived as a collective, process-based living archive. Based on the Slack platform, it invites in-process reflections, “hundreds”, keywords, conversations, prompts, and encounters amongst its participants. It is organized around four streams: “The Crisis was Already Here” (#thecrisiswasalreadyhere), “What does COVID-19 teach us?” (#emergentmodels), “What is the ‘Everyday’ of the Pandemic?” (#theeveryday), and “Reading Space” for sharing links, articles or other material (#whatimreading). Each stream includes some preliminary thoughts and questions to begin an open, process-based, collective conversation.
Alongside the living archive, the Feminist Media Studio is organizing a series of Zoom conversations, artistic prompts, and roundtable discussions with members of numerous communities (academic, artistic and activist) vital to doing intersectional, antiracist, queer, and decolonial feminisms, which participating FMS members can attend, and which will form a vital part of the living archive itself and its various collaborative contributions.
