Chapter 3 / How can this house become a home?
First wave feminism has put power relations that are established in the domestic sphere at the center of investigation —even through the disparity enmeshed in care work. This first edition of WACF wants to question what it means to stay “in” somewhere/somebody, what does it mean to inhabit time and space together. Everyone has different needs and roots, is it possible to find a collective awareness of the dynamics of power that cross our (micro) reality and build a collective balance? To find the threads that that make a shared room a safe space. Hence the workshops and the experiences that complete WACF were born, that enrich and sharpen the focus, together with the shows, talks and live podcasts.
Last Yearz Interesting Negro (Jamila Johnson Small) will host two workshops, together with Fernanda Munoz-Newsome and & Rowdy SS, Unruly Bodies and Everything has Roots; focusing on one side of how and where our bodies find and create intimacy, what are the conditions, what and how to classify friendships. How to find other similar bodies, as unruly as are you. On the other hand, on the dynamic potential of intimacy and boundaries - psychic, spatial and physiological - and how we might (de/re)construct realities in performance to shift our relationship to/understandings of control, entanglement and care.
Kopano Maroga’s workshop As the body is, so it knows is a writing and movement project focused on how to legitimize the emotions and the affections against the oppressive devices that would like to silence them, and how to support and listen to yourself through a class that values in equal measure the body and the mind. Róise Goan will lead a group session, where while knitting, it’s possible to listen to the story of cottage-industry knitter i the north-west of Ireland, and in doing so exchanging experiences about the value of (manual) labour; creating a parallel between the present and the narrated experience.
A guided walk around the Zuid (Woodrow Wilson Square) and the Kouter in Ghent will be led by VIZIT, in search of stories and people who, each in their own way, look further than our 'normal gaze’, to look through the gaze of others and thus see what is usually invisible to us.
And then using natural ingredients and old and new recipes, Bieke Purnelle and Kopano Maroga will work together to make potions and lotions as remedies for body and soul.
The programme is not about viewing feminism only as a topic/issue but as a way of working; of activating the ritual of taking care, embracing difference, the exercise of the gaze and intimacy. We want Vooruit be a place of welcome and a home. During WACF we will inhabit the Balzaal together, equipped with blankets, music, plants and softness, to exercise our awareness.