LET'S PLAY FOR A CARING FUTURE!

What is feminism? I recently read an article of the curator Elke Krasny in which she started  with a similar question. In her text ‘Feminist thought and curating: on method’ (2015), she opens her argument by questioning without establishing any specific answer. She is trying to activate the readers and let them become part of a conversation. Do YOU know what feminism is? Do I even know? What I think feminism is? Does feminism have an answer? Starting with a question is a feminist method and a provocation that put us  outside our comfort zone and make us reflect on from where we are standing. Feminism is an ongoing process that is permanently questioning and reflecting upon our positionality, hierarchies and values. 

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"What is feminism? This question or questions similar to this have been raised and are still being raised over and over again. I would even go so far as to say that feminism is the question" (Krasny E., 2015). 

The question triggers us as readers. However, how do we trigger a similar question as to future urban practitioners? This is a concern that has brought a lot of discussions within urban femina. We are curious about how we can raise these moments of “questioning everything” and which methods we have to apply to ask ourselves those questions in our daily urban experience. 

In general, our cities are shaped by the logic and representation of a few people only, leaving aside utopias and ways of thinking of many others. The city is usually presented, produced, and reproduced as a closing structure with no room for change nor difference. If we believe in a more balanced and caring future away from patriarchy and capitalism, other urban settings are necessary. Constantly asking questions, like Krasny does, into the urban field is a way of shaking our comfort zone, small chaos that might allow us to elaborate new combinations and come up with new responses on how our cities should look like. We believe in the necessity of hacking our daily urban life. We believe that altering practices of traditional urban landscapes can create new urban future possibilities. We believe that being active is the only way through which we could achieve change. Finally, we believe that activating current public spaces by creating spaces of encounter and appropriation is a powerful way to claim our right to the city. We have the responsibility as future urban practitioners to create and re-create, continuously, those spaces. That is why praxis is one of our three guidelines that unfold the work we do. 

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Could the creation of these temporary city-making processes be an act of micro-revolution? We seek to be active, although another key question is HOW do we ALTER. Arts and creative methods could be interesting tools we could use to trigger provocation into city-making processes. Hawkins (2015) talks about ‘creative geographies´, to put art and 'creative doings' as a valuable way of knowing differently and practicing “otherhow”. The use of alternative practices can have the power to bring new answers, by promoting a more experimental path in which the focus is on what we can learn through the process of “doing”, instead of focusing on the final product. Feminist methodologies have twisted the traditional ways in which art is conceived, by disarticulating the three components of the artist, the public, and the artwork. The artist becomes a facilitator, the public becomes the creator and the artwork becomes a process. It is through this process that communities are activated to imagine a future under caring and feminist values. These experiences are key to resist capitalist processes through which urban spaces are currently produced. With artistic methods, the accent is on  “doing”: you are creating something, and that is fun. People can get involved in so many different ways that are not within a rigid and hierarchical format. Giving space to play and experiment truly matters.

Unfortunately, the use of our imagination is not something we give enough value to, it doesn't fit with the productive logic that guides our current social and economic habits. Imagination is a playful exercise, and we stopped playing a long time ago. And, are there even spaces that the city can provide us to develop our imagination? In general, public spaces are not for playing if you are not a child, and they are mainly driven by commercial activities. We need new urban spaces to think differently space and time: two lacking assets of our current system. How can we create free space for urban imagination? How can we promote more playful city experiences? Of course, it doesn't have one single answer, and it is not a one-direction question either. Spaces for imagination and how to produce them are two things that have called our attention and that we would like to explore in the future. 

As the artist, Brett Blooms argues that real participation implies the emergence of new subjectivities. While we keep trying to answer “What is feminism?”, arts and creative practices could be interesting methodologies to trigger alternative and potential answers. If we want to arrive at new results, we need new ways that can go beyond traditional planning methods. While doing: speaking, painting, drawing, dancing, listening, playing, we interact differently, we think differently and our imagination expands differently. 


References: 

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Bloom, B. (2013). SUPERKILEN: PARTICIPATORY PARK EXTREME!. Oda Projesi.

García-Oliveros, E., & Hernández-Mora, G. D. (2015). Cambiar el arte para cambiar el mundo (Una perspectiva feminista) Diálogo abierto con Suzanne Lacy. Calle 14: Revista de investigación en el campo del arte, 10(17), 114-127.

Hawkins, H. (2015). Creative geographic methods: knowing, representing, intervening. On composing place and page. cultural geographies, 22(2), 247-268.

Krasny, E. (2015). Feminist thought and curating: On method. OnCurating, 26, 53-71.

Petrescu, D. (Ed.). (2007). Altering practices: Feminist politics and poetics of space. Routledge.

Pinder, D. (2005). Arts of urban exploration. Cultural geographies, 12(4), 383-411.