Back to the Future… Feb 21

Back to the Future…An Experimental Discussion on Contemporary Feminist Practice
Saturday, February 21, 6:30 pm
Whitney Museum, Fifth Floor galleries
RSVP Required: Reservations on a first-come, first-served basis

Back to the Future was organized by Jen Kennedy, an art historian, and Liz Linden, an artist. They are both currently participants in the Whitney Independent Study Program. At this town-hall-style public discussion, participants will be asked to engage in a temporally specific, group experiment aimed at frank dialogue about feminisms of our day. Relying on a provisional, substitutive vocabulary, our event aims to explore terrain that is not circumscribed by the semantics and tactics of past positions by looking at what, in our contemporary conception of feminism-as-lived-practice, we hold to be intrinsic, innate, and unique.

What happens when we are forced to temporarily set aside the terms of the past and asked to discuss feminism in a language that is rooted artificially and solely in the present? It is our goal that through a non-scripted, non-hierarchical collaboration with the participants, we will use a "Dictionary of Temporary Approximations" to explore the nature of feminisms present, with the intention of ultimately rejuvenating these original terms by returning them to our conversation at the end of the experiment. It is our hope that this will result in a radical expansion of the notion of feminism, bringing it into alignment with contemporary practice.

http://www.whitney.org/www/educational_programs/public_programs.jsp#backtothefuture