[NetBehaviour] November Resident: Olga Kopenkina (BY/US)

[netbehaviour]

November Resident: Olga Kopenkina (BY/US)

18 November, 5pm – lecture: New Feminism and Media
RITS School of Arts, Antoine Dansaertstraat 70, Brussels 1000

21 November, 8.30pm – screening: Feminism is Politics!
Beursschouwburg, Auguste Ortsstraat 20-28, Brussels 1000

http://kranfilm.net/goran-petrovic/november-resident-olga-kopenkina-byus/

Olga Kopenkina is the second Kran Film Resident who will pay a ten-day 
visit to Brussels in order to explore Flemish video and film archives, 
meet film professionals, give a lecture at RITS School of Arts, and 
organize a screening programme at Beursschouwburg Brussels. Kopenkina’s 
residency programme is developed around the theme of gender. She will be 
exploring the relationship between gender and cinema and will question 
how women-filmmakers respond to the various living conditions shaped by 
capital, state politics and war; how they ultimately contribute to 
discussion about significance of an organized action and creation of 
feminist activist networks through the use of film technologies and 
internet.

Lecture: New Feminism and Media
The lecture will depart from early feminist critique, which responded to 
the lack of action in feminist and women’ groups in the late 70s and 
80s, its limited and self-referential discourse, and focus on works by 
women-filmmakers and artists who endeavoured to give the film and 
media-based art a palpable sense of energy, driven by visions of radical 
action. Filmmakers like Alice Guy (France), who pioneered feminist film, 
and Lizzie Borden (USA), female members of Paper Tiger TV activists and 
contemporary cyber-feminists introduced the new ways for feminist 
critique and possibility of organized action through the use of media 
technologies – from independent TV stations and pirate radio of the 
early times to contemporary internet. Contemporary media-based feminists 
artists explore the potential of new feminism to attack, to act from the 
antagonistic position within the wider social and political terrain, 
responding to various living conditions, cultural and material 
productions from women living in different parts of the world. Focusing 
on artistic and political lessons inherited from the past, contemporary 
feminist filmmakers and cyber-feminists propel them to the new circle of 
formation and activation of political subjectivity.

Screening: Feminism is Politics!
Drawing the references to history of feminism and queerness, the film 
program embraces the wide spectrum of art and activism: from performance 
and video to documentation of direct action, redefining notions of 
“riot”, revolt, autonomy, emancipation, revolution, and other concepts 
that shape radical feminist philosophy.

1. Lana Čmajčanin, Female President. 2005, 3,17 min.
2. Iqaa the Olivetone, Locusts, Detroit, 2008, 11,27 min. Produced by 
Invincible for EMERGENCE Media.
3. Pussy Riot, Punk Prayer – Mother of God, Chase Putin Away! 2012, 2 min.
4. Bureau of Melodramatic Research, Protect Your Heart at Work. 2012, 25 
min.
5. Kasja Dahlberg, Female Fist. 2006, 20 min.
+ surprise

Olga Kopenkina is Belarus-born, New York-based curator and art critic. 
Her work focuses both on historical and contemporary art practices 
within the wide spectrum of art and political expression that resulted 
in projects such as Sound of Silence: Art during Dictatorship, 
exhibition at EFA Project Space, NYC, 2012; Reading Lenin with 
Corporations, ongoing seminar and film production; Terror Tactics, film 
program at apexart, New York, 2007; exhibitions Russia: Significant 
Other at Anna Akhmatova Museum, St Petersburg, Russia, 2006 and 
Post-Diasporas: Voyages and Missions at the First Moscow Biennale, 
Moscow (2005). Kopenkina contributed to such publications as Art 
Journal, Moscow Art Magazine, ArtMargins, Manifesta Journal, Modern 
Painters, Afterimage, and others. She currently teaches at New York 
University, Steinhardt School for Arts and Art Professions, Department 
of Media, Culture and Communication.