Promise No Promises!

The podcast Promise No Promises! opens a new chapter called “Feminisms in the Caribbean”. This series of 4 new episodes arises from personal conversations between curator and writer Sonia Fernández Pan and art practitioners from the Caribbean region. The collaboration is part of the public program of the past exhibition "one month after being known in that island" at the Kulturstiftung Basel H. Geiger with the Caribbean Art Initiative.The changeful history of the colonization of the Caribbean has left deep scars that are still present today. This is best known by artists and cultural practitioners who work in their own way on an identity of its own for the Antilles. The term “Caribbean” here is used primarily in a geographical sense to help overcoming local antagonisms between different political systems, languages and cultures, while allowing artists of all origins to exchange ideas and thus work together on a Caribbean identity. This series of podcasts aims to engage with a plurality of voices from differen

The eighth episode of the Feminism Under Corona series is the result of an audio-epistolary conversation with Silvia Agüero Fernández that took place in November 2020. On her Twitter account she introduces herself as follows: “Mother, Gitana, Mestiza, Feminist. Worker in my home. In the ghetto I discovered my Roma identity, outside the ghetto I discovered anti-Roma harassment”. The conversation was translated by Ainhoa Nadia Douhaibi Arrazola, a social educator and co-author of the book The Radicalization of Racism. Islamophobia and the Prevention of Terrorism (2019).The rules imposed during the confinement have at no point taken into account the particularities and vital needs of many idiosyncrasies and individuals. In the case of the Roma people, restrictions on their traditional professions, itinerant trade, open-air markets and artistic creation have left many without work, income, and food. And it is seriously affecting the economic freedom of Romany women. The lack of political support and understanding

The seventh episode of the Feminism Under Corona series follows a conversation with Mariam Khan, writer and editor of the book "It's not about the Burqa" (2019). This first-person anthology of essays of seventeen Muslim women's stories gives rise to a collective voice where differences are as important as similarities in creating a community of their own within the spectrum of feminism and world-making. Reading this book is like being anonymously invited to meet another community of feminists. But not in order to talk to or discuss with them, but mainly to listen and to unlearn. One way of presenting It's not about the Burqa is the final statement by its editor, Mariam Khan, in the introduction: “We are not asking for permission anymore. We are taking up space. We’ve listed a lot of people talking about who Muslim women are without actually hearing Muslim women. So now, we are speaking. And now, it's your turn to listen.”As Mariam Khan herself says, seventeen texts are only seventeen voices within the myriad

The sixth episode of Feminism Under Corona is based on a conversation with Australian-born and New York-based writer and scholar McKenzie Wark, who is known for her writings on critical theory and new media. Her latest book “Reverse Cowgirl” has been published by Semiotext(e) in 2020. Somehow, reading books starts always in reverse. We turn them over with our hands, looking for answers in advance on the back cover. However, “Reverse Cowgirl” is not a book made to satisfy questions, not even those of the author herself regarding her own biography. The following conversation with McKenzie Wark does not provide a continuation of her book. It actually starts with her reflections on Marx. Her critique of capitalism is at the same time a critique of the concepts that the critique of capitalism itself constantly produces. What kind of economy produces information that is turned into a commodity? How can we call the system we live in, which in fact parasites our bodies individually and collectively in order to expand

The fifth episode is based on a conversation with interdisciplinary artist Melanie Jame Wolf, whose work critically circulates within the flow of immaterial capital by using the performative condition and potential of our identities. The conversation between Sonia Fernández Pan and Melanie Jame Wolf incorporated some of the many elephants in the (art) room, such as social class, age, or “undisciplined” bodies in the field of performance, dance, and choreography. It was also an opportunity to talk about social networks and the inevitable perverse functioning of symbolic capital in and through them. As Melanie Jame Wolf points out, contemporary social networks enable a construction of personas similar to those that formerly used to happen in the media space of music videos. Pop is a fundamental component of her artistic and vital practice, including many attributes, gestures, behaviors, and objects associated with a type of femininity that was and still is stigmatized by some sort of feminist thinking that deni

This episode is based on a conversation with Ana Garzón Sabogal, who lives and works in Colombia. In her practice she is operating with the close encounter between art, collaborative learning, activism, and free culture, and is member of Más Arte Más Acción, together with Alejandra Rojas Giraldo. Their practice includes a feminism which stems from the critical conscience and from the understanding of feminist practices as depending on the material conditions of each context, of each community and of each person. The same applies to the political question of language, because of the enormous need to learn, to know, to listen to and share other voices during this pandemic and beyond. This is a work that Ana has done together with many people from the different collectives she is part of, translating texts into English in order to be able to share with peers and people from other cultural contexts the current thinking and making that are happening now in Colombia. If conversations could be translated into object

The title of the third episode „Radical Sociability“ refers to a recent lecture by artist, curator, writer and radio producer Lou Drago in which they were unfolding the complexity of the relationship between identity politics and the current and growing division of the Left. As a way of overcoming the divisive effects of identitarianism, they propose "to enact an intersectional affinity-based politics". In order to avoid the dynamics of the current "cancel culture", so present and constant in social networks, Lou's proposal is based on calling-in rather than calling-out. This conversation between Lou Drago and Sonia Fernández Pan navigates through issues and situations such as the binary understanding of reality, gender abolitionism, the naturalized and somehow hidden ideology of language, xeno-feminist desires, queer as a methodology and constant practice of unlearning, different personal experiences produced by the covid-19, and the different political events of the last weeks as a result of the forms of vi

The podcast Promise No Promises! now continues with a special Feminism Under Corona chapter. Over the next few months ten new episodes arise from conversations between Sonia Fernández Pan and guests from different artistic disciplines and areas of research and life practice. Beyond simple answers or solutions, this series of personal conversations is an attempt to point out different directions, feelings, expectations, sequels, and individual stories in times of the current crisis provoked by Covid-19. It is also a tool for a collectively inhabited feminism when not only gender, class, and race imbalances are reinforced, but are even becoming more visible in the current situation. The second episode entitled The Monogamy of the System is a continous exchange with author and activist Brigitte Vasallo about the consequences and instrumentalization of the pandemic by governments, corporations and people in power. In order to shake up some common considerations about love and monogamy, this conversation aims to e

The podcast Promise No Promises now continues with a special "Feminism Under Corona" chapter. Over the next few months this new series of ten episodes arises from conversations between Sonia Fernández Pan and guests from different artistic disciplines and areas of research and life practice. More than simple answers or solutions, this series of personal conversations is an attempt to point out different directions, feelings, expectations, sequels and individual stories in times of the recent crisis provoked by Covid-19. It is also a tool for a collectively inhabited feminism when not only gender, class and race imbalances are being reinforced, but are even becoming more visible in the current situation. The first episode called “A one flavor reality” is a continuation of a conversation with artist Ran Zhang about the effects and consequences of Covid-19 in a reality that is also mutating despite the confinement of our bodies being locked at home.The first conversation Pan had about Covid-19 with the artist Ra

With the third Symposium "Women on Earth" we were seeking to understand the relations between feminism and species coexistence. The issue of nature—and of all that is naturalized or deemed unnatural by hegemonic discourses and policy—is of particular importance to gender issues, as is science. But a scientific and technical approach to the climate emergency cannot be accurate without taking into consideration how gender, racial, and economic violence foster our emergent ecocides, nor by how women—often poor and Indigenous women—are overwhelmingly at the forefront of this violence as the very first recipients of. What kind of political and cultural transformation must occur to make these entanglements obvious and of vital concern? How to counter this violence in all its manifold forms? Our guests were: Rossella Biscotti, Neha Choksi, Ingela Ihrman, Institute of Queer Ecology, Sophie Jung, Lysann König, Thomas Lempertz, Agnes Meyer-Brandis, New Mineral Collective (Tanya Busse and Emilija Škarnulytė), Katrin Nie

With the third Symposium "Women on Earth" we were seeking to understand the relations between feminism and species coexistence. The issue of nature—and of all that is naturalized or deemed unnatural by hegemonic discourses and policy—is of particular importance to gender issues, as is science. But a scientific and technical approach to the climate emergency cannot be accurate without taking into consideration how gender, racial, and economic violence foster our emergent ecocides, nor by how women—often poor and Indigenous women—are overwhelmingly at the forefront of this violence as the very first recipients of. What kind of political and cultural transformation must occur to make these entanglements obvious and of vital concern? How to counter this violence in all its manifold forms? Our guests were: Rossella Biscotti, Neha Choksi, Ingela Ihrman, Institute of Queer Ecology, Sophie Jung, Lysann König, Thomas Lempertz, Agnes Meyer-Brandis, New Mineral Collective (Tanya Busse and Emilija Škarnulytė), Katrin Nie

With the third Symposium "Women on Earth" we were seeking to understand the relations between feminism and species coexistence. The issue of nature—and of all that is naturalized or deemed unnatural by hegemonic discourses and policy—is of particular importance to gender issues, as is science. But a scientific and technical approach to the climate emergency cannot be accurate without taking into consideration how gender, racial, and economic violence foster our emergent ecocides, nor by how women—often poor and Indigenous women—are overwhelmingly at the forefront of this violence as the very first recipients of. What kind of political and cultural transformation must occur to make these entanglements obvious and of vital concern? How to counter this violence in all its manifold forms? Our guests were: Rossella Biscotti, Neha Choksi, Ingela Ihrman, Institute of Queer Ecology, Sophie Jung, Lysann König, Thomas Lempertz, Agnes Meyer-Brandis, New Mineral Collective (Tanya Busse and Emilija Škarnulytė), Katrin Nie

This episode has Mark Sadler and Jörg Heiser sharing pearls of wisdom concerning the grammar of painting, architecture of philosophy and notions of freedom. And suddenly, the horizon is opening up wide. Disputaziuns Susch, from the beginning in 2017, has been a multi-disciplinary annual endeavor, bringing together scholars and artists, philosophers and authors, neuroscientists and historians – thinkers who will be asking questions and counter questions – in its 2019’s editions circling around the possibilities for universal truths versus a relative view of human temporality and finitude, rational thinking and the notion of men as ‘symbolic animals’, creating a universe of symbolic meanings, versus our being-in-the-world, perceiving the world via our relationship to time. Taking the Davos disputation in 1929, between Ernst Cassirer and Martin Heidegger, as a starting point, this ‘continental divide’ (as Peter E. Gordon called it) or ‘Weggabelung der Philosophie’ as per Henning Ritter – 90 years ahead, in Su

The third episode in the series of chapters from Disputaziuns Susch, an annual conference scheme hosted by Art Stations Foundation CH and Grazyna Kulczyk, has Elisabeth Bronfen looking at Virginia Woolfe’s ‘Breaking the Waves’ and comparing Woolfe's feeling of ‘walking a tightrope over nothingness’ to Heidegger’s notion of individual existences as 'being thrown' into the world. Also the horizon (see episode two) is returning to the debate. Disputaziuns Susch, from the beginning in 2017, has been a multi-disciplinary annual endeavor, bringing together scholars and artists, philosophers and authors, neuroscientists and historians – thinkers who will be asking questions and counter questions – in its 2019’s editions circling around the possibilities for universal truths versus a relative view of human temporality and finitude, rational thinking and the notion of men as ‘symbolic animals’, creating a universe of symbolic meanings, versus our being-in-the-world, perceiving the world via our relationship to time.

The first episode in a series of chapters from Disputaziuns Susch, an annual conference scheme hosted by Art Stations Foundation CH and Grazyna Kulczyk, has Aleksandra Mir imagining an artist and a scientist sitting on a train where a conversation ensues about objective realities, space exploration, negative space and belief. In spring 1929, just a glimpse before the Great Depression and the Great Crash to come soon, the Cassirer-Heidegger debate takes place in Davos; Ernst Cassirer pulls his arguments for a broader conception of humanity, his counterpart is Martin Heidegger and his relativism. The quest of a universal truth drives a ‘continental divide’ (Peter E. Gordon) or ‘Weggabelung der Philosophie’ (Henning Ritter), anticipating major philosophical debates to come. 90 years ahead, in Susch, 40 minutes away from Davos, once again in times of disorientation, disillusion, with radical movements on the rise, we were repeating the question that led the historical debate: What is it to be human? Disputazi

The second episode of the series of chapters from Disputaziuns Susch, an annual conference scheme hosted by Art Stations Foundation CH and Grazyna Kulczyk, has Timotheus Vermeulen analyzing opposing positions: Where Cassirer believes that his point of view projects the horizon; Heidegger believes that we are thrown into a horizon, which means the horizon is there before us or rather, in his terms, with us. In spring 1929, just a glimpse before the Great Depression and the Great Crash to come soon, the Cassirer-Heidegger debate takes place in Davos; Ernst Cassirer pulls his arguments for a broader conception of humanity, his counterpart is Martin Heidegger and his relativism. The quest of a universal truth drives a ‘continental divide’ (Peter E. Gordon) or ‘Weggabelung der Philosophie’ (Henning Ritter), anticipating major philosophical debates to come. 90 years ahead, in Susch, 40 minutes away from Davos, once again in times of disorientation, disillusion, with radical movements on the rise, we were repeatin

The two days Symposium “Women in Space” at the Art Institute HGK FHNW in Basel thematized the roles of scale, space and power in envisioning women in the art system: Space is an issue for everyone, yet, it has specific resonance for those who make exhibitions and run institutions, and for women in general. How we move through space, how we claim it, how we narrate and thematize it, how we fund it, how we labor in it, how we construct and deconstruct it. In this episode Chus Martinez & Quinn Latimer are in conversation with Manuela Moscoso, Elena Filipovic, Nikola Dietrich.

The two days Symposium “Women in Space” at the Art Institute HGK FHNW in Basel thematized the roles of scale, space and power in envisioning women in the art system: Space is an issue for everyone, yet, it has specific resonance for those who make exhibitions and run institutions, and for women in general. How we move through space, how we claim it, how we narrate and thematize it, how we fund it, how we labor in it, how we construct and deconstruct it. In this episode Chus Martinez & Quinn Latimer are in conversation with Manuela Moscoso, Nadine Wietlisbach, Fanni Fetzer and Sophie Jung (from the audience).

The two days Symposium “Women in Space” at the Art Institute HGK FHNW in Basel thematized the roles of scale, space and power in envisioning women in the art system: Space is an issue for everyone, yet, it has specific resonance for those who make exhibitions and run institutions, and for women in general. How we move through space, how we claim it, how we narrate and thematize it, how we fund it, how we labor in it, how we construct and deconstruct it. In this episode Chus Martinez & Quinn Latimer are in conversation with Raffael Dörig, Fanni Fetzer, Nadine Wietlisbach, Sabine Himmelsbach.

The two days Symposium “Women in Space” at the Art Institute HGK FHNW in Basel thematized the roles of scale, space and power in envisioning women in the art system: Space is an issue for everyone, yet, it has specific resonance for those who make exhibitions and run institutions, and for women in general. How we move through space, how we claim it, how we narrate and thematize it, how we fund it, how we labor in it, how we construct and deconstruct it. In this episode Chus Martinez & Quinn Latimer are in conversation with Mareike Dittmer, Manuela Moscoso, Marie Muracciole, iLiana Fokianaki, Sophie Jung (artist from the audience).