Festival TOKSI-LINE
#Feminism #environment #geopolitics
Curated by Margaret Tali and Rebeka Põldsam
in collaboration with the video platform D’EST and the online magazine Feministeerium
at the Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia (EKKM) Cafe and the Estonian Academy of Arts
26-27 January 2019
Toxic masculinity, toxic ignorance, toxic anger… But can feminism also be toxic? Toxic to whom and in what circumstances? At the end of January we will bring together the themes of feminism, the environment and Eastern European art in order to discuss ways how to think of about toxicity in our increasingly polluted world. According to Eurobarometer (2017) Estonia has one of the lowest levels of environmental awareness in Europe. To seek for solutions how to increase this awareness we have compiled a choice of videos tackling environmental issues from the collectively curated D’EST video platform that focuses on Eastern European feminist and collective artist positions. How does social and ecological toxicity affect our bodies and emotions? What can we change to care for our environment and one another better? How does the post-socialist past affect these changes? How does feminist theory make sense of humans in relation to the non-human world? What are the power-relations embedded in these connections and how does this affect our environment? How can art help in raising environmental awareness and can we imagine together a new environmental revolution?
The festival involves a workshop, video screenings, discussions and live music. Saturday events are in English and Sunday events are in Estonian.
Everyone is very welcome to join!
PROGRAM
Saturday, 26 January (program in English)
13 h “Writing a Script for a Past Revolution” Workshop by Elske Rosenfeld at Estonian Academy of Arts
Please register here.
The workshop addresses the relationship between revolution and the body, gesture and movement. It is based on a short video clip from the first meeting of the Central Round Table of the GDR (a kind of revolutionary council) from 1989. In the ten-minute scene, the assembled revolutionaries and representatives of the regime struggle to respond to a demonstration that suddenly manifests outside the assembly hall. For this occasion, participants are invited to work with the physical gestures and movements of the protagonists, experimenting with different procedures: mimicking and abstracting, writing and enacting a gestural script. The workshop also offers a platform to discuss the participants’ own experiences with forms of political organizing and it is part of her long-term project “A Vocabulary of Revolutionary Gestures.”
Elske Rosenfeld is an artist of East-German origins. Her primary focus are the histories of state-socialism and its dissidences. She blogs at www.dissidencies.net. She is a participating artist at D’EST.
15 h Lunch at EKKM Café
16 h Video program and live music by kannel player Eva Väljaots. Screening of selected video works by Marwa Arsanios, Ioana Cojocariu, Factory of Found Clothes (Natalya Pershina and Olga Egorova), and The Bureau of Melodramatic Research (Irina Gheorghe and Alina Popa) from the D’EST program, introduced by Ulrike Gerhardt (initiator of D’EST) and an additional video work by Anna-Stina Treumund.
18 h Roundtable on the interconnections of feminist video art, geopolitics and environmental action with Ulrike Gerhardt, Eneken Laanes (TLÜ), Elske Rosenfeld, Margaret Tali, Rebeka Põldsam and the audience
20 h After hours with DJs
Sunday, 27 January (program in Estonian)
12-17 h Manifesto slam and celebration of the 4th birthday of online platform Feministeerium with editors Aet Kuusik, Nele Laos, and Kadi Viik, moderated by Rebeka Põldsam. For info here.
The festival is supported by Eesti Kultuurkapital. Pire Sova, Ando Neulainen, Ulrike Gerhardt, Marwa Arsanios, Ioana Cojocariu, Factory of Found Clothes, The Bureau of Melodramatic Research, Elske Rosenfeld, Feministeerium, EKKM Café and Estonian Academy of Arts thank you for your collaboration!