Sorcha Dallas

Editie # 2: Feminist Legacies And Potentials In Contemporary Art Practice

The famous quote of the anarchist Emma Goldman - If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution - is the departure point of the travelling visual arts programme that will be presented at De Appel in Amsterdam and is curated by Frederique Bergholtz, Tanja Elstgeest and Annie Fletcher. This years’ programme borrows from the language of dance, music, theatre and archived visual material to create a series of performances which re-think the position and representation of women today. The artists presented, engage with performance and the live moment from an emancipatory perspective. From there the programme examines the legacies and potentials of feminism and the ‘politicalbody’ (whether alone or collective) from a variety of contemporary artistic positions.

As an agile and experimental curatorial platform, ‘If I Can’t Dance…’ departs from a spirit of open questioning and enquiry with artists. The year it looks specifically at the legacies and potentials of feminism in relation to art today. Beinning with the quote of Emma Goldman: ‘It I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution’, the project explores the critical and celebratory implications of this statement.

‘It I Can’t Dance…’ is not trying to sum up a contemporary feminist art or to collate an aesthetic for feminism, but rather to explore how feminist thinking on all levels (social, artistic, political, theoretical, ideological or structural) may be important in our cultural life. There is currently a rich artistic discourse, which taps into this legacy and manifests itself in the materiality and language of visual art, but also interrogates how artists choose to perform themselves and their work within the dominant visual economy. The project aims to explore these tendencies as inquisitively and openly as possible.

Developing ‘If I Can’t Dance…’ with De Appel makes it possible to articulate a historical context for this legacy very precisely. Established in 1975, this art centre has a rich history of showing experimental art for over thirty years and a revived interest in its programming now. Archival documentation exploring this legacy from the late 70’s and early 80’s will be presented. These practices provide an interesting comparison to the vernacular used by artists to think through ideas of agency, singularity and political empowerment today.

‘If I Can’t Dance..’ doesn’t offer a determined survey in the form of a single exhibition, it works repeatedly with an expanding group of over thirty artists in a series of public platforms. To this end, in Amsterdam ‘If I Can’t Dance…’ manifests itself as an exhibition and a series of performances at De Appel, a symposium at Del Balie, an ‘insert’ by the Otolith Group into the exhibition ‘Just in Time’ at the Stedelijk Museum CS and with two evening events at Club 11.

For more info, see: http://www.ificantdance.org