DIY Panel: (Do It Yourself) Feminisms: from Pioneer to Punk to Post Digital
at 7pm at The Tribeca Performing Art Center at
Borough of Manhattan Community College
199 Chambers Street
New York, NY 10007
212-220-1459
Organizers and moderators:
Judith K. Brodsky, national coordinator, The Feminist Art Project and co-director, Institute for Women and Art at Rutgers University and Kat Griefen, director, A.I.R. Gallery, New York and chair, New York City chapter, The Feminist Art Project.
Panelists
Daria Dorosh, artist and a founding member of A.I.R. Gallery; Kathleen Hanna, artist and founder of Riot Grrrl Movement; and Raphaele Shirley, video artist and founder of PAM (Perpetual Art Machine).
Description
This panel will reflect on feminism in a DIY context as it emerged from pioneer to punk to post digital culture. DIY or “do it yourself” refers to people making something without dependence on commercial professional help. DIY started in the late 19th century with the Arts and Crafts movement. Television fostered the DIY movement with “How To. . . “ programs. More recently, the punk music scene furthered DIY through fanzines. Out of that grew the Riot Grrrl Movement, a feminist version of the Punk music aesthetic. Today, the proliferation of You Tube, My Space and other websites on which people can express themselves is the latest embodiments of DIY.
The emergence of feminism in the arts has not yet been linked to the DIY revolution. Did the feminist artists’ early use of non-traditional art materials, installation and performance relate to the emergence of DIY movements? Thinking more broadly, the Feminist Art Movement was a “Do It Yourself” movement in itself. Women artists seized their own destinies and made them happen. They established their own galleries like A.I.R. and own journals like Heresies. Looking at both movements together reveals insights about each.
Biographies
Judith K. Brodsky is Distinguished Professor Emerita in the Department of Visual Arts at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. She is the Founding Director of the Rutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper, renamed the Brodsky Center in her honor in September 2006. Brodsky is a founder and director of the established Rutgers Institute for Women and Art. She is also a national coordinator of The Feminist Art Project. Brodsky is chair of the forthcoming international print festival, Philagrafika, which will take place in Philadelphia in 2010. She is a past national president of ArtTable, the College Art Association, and the Women’s Caucus for Art
Brodsky has organized and curated many exhibitions and written extensively about women and prints. Brodsky is currently organizing the 25th anniversary exhibition of the Brodsky Center, which is scheduled to open at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 2011. A printmaker and artist in her own right, Brodsky’s work is in the permanent collections of over 100 museums.
Daria Dorosh is an artist, educator, activist, and researcher with SMARTlab Digital Media Institute at the University of East London, where she is completing her PhD thesis Patterning: The Informatics of Art and Fashion in which she explores the underlying patterns driving fashion, fine art and digital culture. Since 1974, she has produced seventeen one-person exhibitions and her work has been shown at media events such as D.E.A.F. (Dutch Electronic Arts Festival), DIGit, Siggraph2004, and published in Leonardo, Journal of the International Society for the Arts, Sciences, and Technology.. She is an early feminist and co- founder of A.I.R. Gallery, NY, the first artist-run gallery in the United States established in 1972 to show the work of women artists. She has taught fashion design at the Fashion Institute of Technology, NY, since 1969 and taught fine art at Parsons School of Design, NY, from 1976-1985. A catalog of work by Daria Dorosh, Reweaving Time, with essays by David Carrier and Dominique Nahas is available from A.I.R. Gallery and through her website at http://www.dariadorosh.com.
Kat Griefen has been the director of A.I.R. Gallery, in Chelsea, New York since 2006. A.I.R. was founded in 1972 as the first artist run not-for-profit art gallery for women artists. Ms. Griefen received her BA from SUNY Purchase in Women Studies & Art History and spent three 3 years in the PhD. Program in Art History at The Graduate Center of the City of New York. Her recent writing has centered on trans men's visual culture, including a published essay, titled "The Boy in the Blue Dress" in Imago, The Drama of Pelf-Portraiture in Recent Photography, published by Rutgers University. Ms. Griefen is also an independent curator. Here most recent exhibition, Material Matter, American Abstract Artists, was on view at Sideshow Gallery in Brooklyn, New York in September 2007.
Kathleen Hanna is an American musician, activist, and zine writer. In the 1990s she was the lead singer of Bikini Kill and feminist electro-punk band Le Tigre. In 1998, Hanna released a solo album under the name Julie Ruin. Hanna has contributed a great deal to the revival of feminism and is considered one of the leading icons of the '90s riot grrrl movement. She has collaborated with a wide variety of musicians, appearing on records with numerous artists, such as Atari Teenage Riot, Joan Jett, the Rickets, Green Day, Internal/External and Mike Watt.
Raphaele Shirley is a multi-media artist living and working in NYC. She is co-founder of Perpetual Art Machine [PAM], an interactive video installation and online web community amongst other collaborative projects. Upcoming solo exhibition include the Emily Harvey Foundation, New York and the Marc de Puechrdeon Gallery, Basel, Switzerland. Among recent exhibitions, with [PAM], Video Art in the Age of the Internet at the Chelsea Art Museum, New York, Video as Urban Condition at the museum of Modern Art, Linz, Austria and in Art Basel /Video Lounge curated by Michael Rush 2006. Independently she has shown at the Instambul art fair, PhotoMiami, Lincoln Center and at several Scope art fairs. Raphaele Shirley was also a co-founder of Show World/The Laugh Factory a Multimedia Arts Center and Exhibition space 42nd street and 8th Avenue, co-founder of the New York International Fringe Festival and director of Fringe Al fresco/Outdoor events from 1997-1999. From 1997-2002 she worked with Nam June Paik in the development and exhibition of his laser sculptures.
The Feminist Art Project is a collaborative national initiative celebrating the Feminist Art Movement. TFAP works to prevent the ongoing erasure of women from the cultural record by focusing attention on the achievements of the Feminist Art Movement and spotlighting current feminist art influences, trends and accomplishments. The TFAP website calendar lists feminist exhibitions, lectures, artist talks, classes, and films nationwide, and TFAP regional coordinators and groups across the country work to develop and promote feminist art events. TFAP is a program of the Institute for Women and Art at Rutgers University, co-directed by Dr. Ferris Olin. Other IWA programs include the Mary H. Dana Women Artists Series exhibitions and the Women Artists Archives National Directory. The websites for TFAP and IWA are http://thefeministartproject.rutgers.edu and http://iwa.rutgers.edu.
A.I.R. GALLERY has been advocating for women in the visual arts since 1972. Most women artists in the late 1960s had few places to exhibit their art. In response to this problem, a group of women artists founded A.I.R. (Artists in Residence) in 1972. It was the first cooperative for women artists in the United States. The goal of the gallery has been to provide a professional and permanent exhibition space for women artists to show work of quality and diversity. The gallery's exhibiting artists are a core group of 22 New York based artists and 20 artists from around the United States. A.I.R. is an artist directed and maintained gallery that has provided a sense of community for women and served as a model for other alternative galleries and organizations. Through lectures, symposia and a Fellowship Program for emerging women artists, A.I.R. serves to maintain a political awareness and voice and to bring a new understanding to old attitudes about women in the arts.
