DIY: 2014 – Alana Jelinek ‘You want me to do it your way?’

Articulating contemporary approaches to feminist art and activism and celebrating its many forms.

Project Summary:
This project is both about practice-sharing and a critique of models of alternative and activist practice that tend to be either 'Trotskyist' (led by a charismatic, usually white, male leader) or rigidly consensus, which is often purported to be feminist, though this is highly disputable. Taking Chantal Mouffe's thesis on agonism and Jacques Ranciere's on dissensus as the starting point, this project is a search for alternative feminist structures and a celebration of the wide variety of approaches to art and activist practice that model alternatives to neoliberalism and to dominant 'alternative' practices. I hope that we will encourage new untested or uncelebrated varieties of feminist art practice and feminist activist practice. 

The aim is to develop a network of feminist practices that are feminist specifically in the sense of modelling feminist alternatives to patriarchal structures and models of power, including the usual ways that activism is structured

Participants will visit each other's 'sites of alternatives' at which the strategies and practices of each are discussed and analyzed in a friendly and cooperative, yet rigorous, form of art school 'crit'. These encounters may be catalogued in blog form, if deemed useful and productive by the group. We will undertake 12 studio or project visits

and 2 days of talking through feminist theories of power and activism, with invited contributors serving as sparks and catalysts. 

There may be some form of output, possibly a resource for feminist practices or set of essays about feminist practices or an exhibition or an action, if this is deemed interesting to the group of participants.

Dates, times and location(s):
12 studio or project visits across Ireland (North and South) 

over 5 nights of the week beginning 8 September. Studio and site visits will be after hours, 6ish to 8ish in the evening.
The workshop weekend of Saturday and Sunday 13th and 14th September will be hosted by Create, 2 Curved Street, Temple Bar, Dublin 2, 10ish to 4ish.

Application procedure:
Please email a CV and a 500 word statement about how your practice (artistic, activist or both) models a feminist or alternative structure or approach to Alana Jelinek cci'ng Aaron Wright.

Deadline, noon, Monday July 21st.

The artist:
I originally trained as a painter, but my art practice currently includes performance and site-specific interventions, as well as research. A wide ranging practice, my work stems from an ongoing concern with colonial and postcolonial (neoliberal) power and the way individuals navigate systems. One example of this is an ongoing, durational eco-art project called The Field that models a feminist structure of power. Art, for me, is a philosophical praxis. What I mean by this is that, for me, art is a philosophical enquiry using materiality to explore, interrogate and enact ideas. All of my work explores mechanisms of power and an individual's relationship to these. This includes the historical colonial past, with its legacies in the present and the present within neoliberalism. http://www.alanajelinek.com/.

Contact:
Alana Jelinek

This project is part of DIY 11: 2014 and is supported by Create Ireland.