»a woman must have money and a room of her own… hence, enlightened, responsible and sensationalist women have no choice but to overthrow the government… to let hundreds of stories and genders bloom… to embrace masturbation… for Bitches are beautiful… and we have nothing to lose – except our fear.«
Manifestos have accompanied feminist movements since the very beginning. Their authors criticize the status quo, imagine new futures, call for the collective solidarity of a »we« and state demands. When Virginia Woolf wrote her manifesto »A Room of One’s Own« in 1929, she could probably not have imagined that almost a hundred years later, people would still be fighting for spaces, access and independence. So many of the feminist manifestos of the last century still read as surprisingly contemporary.
In the installation </A “Manifesto” of= {every} One.s Own>, visitors encounter an archive of texts, sounds and images, an ensemble of stage technology and an artificial intelligence with whom they collaborate to assemble the puzzle pieces of past struggles into new contexts. At the same time, the installation explores the encoded space as a place to conceive of collective political action while following the traces of feminist history to engage with possibilities of a utopian future.
Swoosh Lieu (Johanna Castell, Katharina Pelosi, Rosa Wernecke) was founded in 2009 at the Institute for Applied Theater Studies and develops performances, installations, radio plays and films. The queerfeminist collective creates temporary spaces and images in real time while addressing their fabrication. </A “Manifesto” of= {every} One.s Own> is their first collaboration with Ballhaus Ost.
