work, commodities, money, pain
- Feminist poetry and #FLUID concert
3 h
16.10.2022
Sunday
19:00
Tickets
Info
Our organisms, with their ways of moving, relating, loving, affecting the environment and allowing themselves to be affected, are formed by the action of complex modes of production and reproduction. But we are what we are not only because of the action of oppressive systems such as patriarchy and capitalism, but also because of the ongoing struggle, personal and collective, against this oppression. What role can our words play in these struggles? How can we create a literature that effectively critiques capitalism and patriarchy, and the ways in which they confine so many forms of existence to subordinate positions? How can we form new networks of relationships, ones in which the results of our labors are no longer commodified but given a different value, other than aesthetic or market value? How can the results of our work – be it writing or any other work – be given a value that sustains life – togetherness, happiness and prosperity for all? How do we find our words for a revolutionary literature that critiques the idealization and “naturalization” of care work and the invisibilization of reproductive work; or the idealization of literary creation and the justification of its quasi-inexistence of remuneration? How can we criticize the system that alienates us from the products of our work, that puts market prices on them, while in the same time reclaiming our right to live, now, in the present, from our work?
The event “work, commodities, money, pain”, which brings together several voices of contemporary feminist, queer and left-wing poetry, takes place at the National Center for Dance Bucharest and is part of the third edition of the Feminist Literature Days festival.
Event concept: Andreea Andrei
Poems by: Elena Vlădăreanu, Medeea Iancu, Iulia Militaru, Mihaela Michailov, Alexandru Adam, Veda Popovici
Concert: #FLUID
Event host: Paul Dunca / Paula Dunker
Curator: Laura Sandu
Biographies
alexandru adam studies Philosophy in Cluj. They made their debut earlier this year at fractalia publishing house with stilizări, ap. They also wrote a performance-text – mediux – published as a brochure (fractalia) and featured on Cenaclul X’s 2022 anthology Luminișuri.
Veda Popovici is an organizer, theorist and artist dedicated to anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian and communitarian principles and practices. Her work focuses on material possibilities of reclaiming the commons and decolonial, queer and feminist practices and has developed in the context of various autonomous, anarchist and feminist initiatives such as the Gazette of Political Art, Dysnomia community, Claca center, Macaz cooperative and autonomous collective. After finishing her PhD on nationalism in Romanian art of the 1980s, she has taught classes on decolonial thought, nationalism and feminist theory at the National University of Arts in Bucharest and at the University of California Santa Cruz. Dedicated to radical housing organizing, she has cofounded the Common Front for Housing Rights in Bucharest and the national federation for housing justice The Block for Housing and between 2019 and 2021 she has been the facilitator of the European Action Coalition for the Right to Housing and the City.
Veda is currently a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow of the Inhabiting Radical Housing ERC-funded project, hosted by the Polytechnic of Turin. She is also a Core Team Member of the Beyond Inhabitation Lab. Veda is based in Bucharest, Romania.
Elena Vlădăreau writes poetry, prose and for live performances. She is interested in creating poetry using the instruments of other media; her creation often revolves around the human body and its limitations, questioning at the same time its political dimension. She works as a journalist for Radio România Cultural in Bucharest.
Iulia Militaru is a writer and editor at frACTalia Press. She has published several volumes of experimental literature and critical theory, including Literatura și fenomenul alienării, in 2020. In 2021, the translation of the volume Confiscarea bestiei. A post-research appeared at the Argentine publishing house: Ediciones Hasta Trilce. Interested in New Materialism and Queer Theory, she started working on the Maia Şerbănescu project in 2018, in order to experience new forms of material existence, alternative sexualities and bodily transformations in immersion in different environments. Maia Şerbănescu is a hybrid xeno-entity, with a special fascination for ero guro nansensu and gurlesque poetry, and author of the volume: Fuck off, Mr. Charcot! (2019).
Medeea Iancu is a feminist poet and filmmaker, the author of four volumes of poems, including Delacroix este tabu: Suita romînească (CR, 2017), Delacroix este tabu: Amendamentele lirice (frACTalia, 2019). She coordinated the volume Arta revendicării. Antologie de poezie feministă (EPLF, 2019, frACTalia, 2020). In 2022 she published Sonet de interval [Și ce face primăvara cu cireși. Dacă versurile au fost rătăcite sau au fost curmate. Dacă sufletul meu e în toate] (booklet, LitFem/ frACTalia).
Mihaela Michailov is a playwright and performing arts critic. She is interested in educational and political art, fluid performative dramaturgies, performance theory and emotional pedagogies. She has held, since 2007, conferences and presentations focused on the evolution of Romanian performing arts in Avignon, Paris, Nancy, Vienna, Tokyo. Her theatre plays have been translated into Bulgarian, English, French, German, Greek, Spanish.
Laura Sandu is concerned with the revolutionary possibilities of queer-feminist writing and the creation of spaces for its development. She is the author of several texts published online and in collective volumes, and one of the initiators of the Literature and Feminism platform.
#FLUID (born 2016) – a queer act based in Bucharest – is the collaboration between Paula Dunker (performer, actress, choreographer, playwright), Alex Bălă (musician) and other warped creatures. Using sound, music and a microphone as weapons against civic neutrality, #FLUID is the mother of the techno-faggothique neo-genre. The duo’s live appearances include very diverse scenes and events as : MACAZ – Bar Teatru Coop., POINT – Theatre, Sala Dalles for Eco Delta Dunării Project, Replika – Center for Educational Theatre, Street Delivery 2016, Bucharest Pride 2016, Queer Night, Voila Psychiatric Hospital (for the project ”Normality, Such a Brutal Word !” – MNAC), CAPITOL Summer Theatre, Nicodim Gallery, Amural Festival 3 &4/ 2017 + 2018 (Brașov), the exhibition WE WILL NOT CHANGE OUR SHOW – Brno, Czech Republic, One Gallery – Sofia, Control Club – Bucharest, Opening of the OWR 2019 Film Festival, OWR 2020, anim’est 2019, Goethe Institute Bucharest, The Venice Biennale 2022 and two weddings.