For two weeks in November 2015, we took over Third Space in order to sit down and think about the question: what can feminism do?

The space was turned into a research chamber and a think tank, as we got down with books, film, music and people (& other beings as well). We were grateful to host visitors who came to talk with us, bringing with them questions, answers, books, food and drink.

suomeksi:
Kahden viikon ajan marraskuussa 2015 käytimme Third Space -taiteentilaa ajatushautomona ja tutkimuskammiona, jossa keskustelimme kutsuvieraiden, ohikulkijoiden, ystävien, kirjojen, elokuvien ja musiikin kanssa. Kiitokset kaikille, jotka toivat mukanaan kysymyksiä, vastauksia, kirjoja, ruokaa ja juomaa.
Tämä osio on kirjoitettu vain englanniksi.

BLOG
First day: Setting up, reading, and thinking about space and politics
11/10/2015
First day brought us questions about space and politics, as we pondered about the contemporary relevance of the 60’s feminist statement “personal is political” in relation to private space.
What is the becoming of the political?
What is its time – when do things become political?
What is the difference between private and privatisation?
What are the economic-spatial-political relationships of private space(s) today?
In other words, we started with a curatorial approach of thinking about feminism with space and time.
Peggy Phelan, talking about Yvonne Rainer’s “The Man Who Envied Women”, gives us an answer for what we could or should be working towards:
“What she [Rainer] argues for then is a new notion of spatial privilege – an anti-privilege; or maybe that’s the wrong term – privilegelessness is closer. A world in which the space one occupies (publicly and privately) is not subject to or the object of envy.”
P. Phelan, Unmarked – the politics of performance, 1993. p. 83
Phelan also quotes Rainer’s film:
“Rainer asks, ‘If this were an art work how would you critique it?’ The answer brilliantly recasts the connections between the images and suggests that spatial arrangements, artistic and rationalistic, are inherently political. I quote just briefly from Rosler’s long argument:
I would feel I was being tricked into trying to deal with things that have become incommensurable as though they weren’t incommensurable. That I was being told that the myths of civility at home and the problems of daily life are not only a veneer over the truth that the state destroys people. It is as though I were being told that when dealing with the ultimate, my worries about how I live my life in America are not important.” (1993: 82-83)

LIBRARY / KIRJASTO
11/10/2015 but updated throughout the 2 weeks
List of books that can we keep with us while working in Third Space.
Feel free to pop in and browse our library, read and discuss with us.
And of course, the list goes on! So suggest a must read book or a text that we are missing !
BOOKS/KIRJAT
Aaltola, Elisa (toim.): Johdatus eläinfilosofiaan
Ambrozic, Mara, Vettese, Angela (eds.): Art as a Thinking Process
Barthes, Roland: How to live together – Novelistic simulations of some everyday spaces
Chomsky, Noam: On Anarchisim
Cixous, Hélène: Stigmata
Condorelli, Céline: The Compnay She Keeps
Conversation: Futures Studies and Feminism: Karen Hurley, Eleonora Masini, Elise Boulding, Riane Eisler, Smita Premchander, Pamela McCorduck, Patricia Kelly, Debra Bateman, Elisabet Santouris, Caroline Smith, Jeanette Patindol, Vuokko jatva, Ivana Milojevic, Linda Groff.
Derrina, Jacques: The Animat That Therefore I Am
Dunham, Lena: Not That Kind of Girl
Eig, Jonathan: The birth of the pill
Fanon, Frantz: Wretched of the Earth
FEMKAMP-bang om nordisk feminism
Haraway, Donna: ​Companion Species Manifesto
h.arta (ed.): FEMINISME Reviewing Concepts and Affirming New Positions
Heti, Sheila: How should a person be?
hooks, bell: Vapauttava kasvatus
hooks, bell: Outlaw Culture – Resisting Representations
Jotuni, Maria: Nevelleja ja muuta proosaa I & II
Kära Liv och Caroline, -Liv Strömquist och Caroline Ringskog Ferrada-Noli svarar frågor om livet
Lind, Maria, What, How & for Whom/WHW (eds.): At and the F Word on the Browning of Europe
Milojevic, Ivana: Feminising Future Studies. In Rescuing All Our Futures: The Futures of Future Studies (1999).
Milojevic, Ivana: Timing feminism, feminising time.
Moore, Michael: Stupid White Men
Moran, Caitlin: How to build a girl
Moran, Caitlin: Naisena olemisen taito
Mouffe, Chantal: AGONISTICS thinking the world politicallty
O’Neill, Paul (ed.): Curating Subjects
O’Neill, Paul & Wilson, Mick (eds.): Curating and the Educational Turn
Oriskova, Mária (ed.): Curating ‘EASTERN EUROPE’ and beyond: Art Histories through the Exhibition
Phelan, Peggy: UNMARKED the politics of performance
Plath, Sylvia: Sanantuojat
Plath, Sylvia: The Collected Poems
Saarinen, Jaana, Ojala, Hanna, Palmu, Tarja (toim.): Eroja ja vaaralisia suhteita – keskustelua feministisestä pedagogiikasta
Sennett, Richard: Together – the rituals, pleasures and politics of cooperation
Steedman, Marijke (ed.) : Gallery as Community: Art Education, Politics
Steyerl, Hito: The Wretched of the Screen
Strömquist, Liv: Kunskapens frukt
Thompson, Nato (ed.): Living as Form – socially engaged art from 1991-2011
Walter, Natasha: Living Dolls, The Return of Sexism
Westin, Boel & Svensson, Helen (toim.): Kirjeitä Tove Janssonilta
Woolf, Virginia: Oma huone
MAGAZINES/LEHDET
Bang: Feministisk Kulturtidskrift, Nr 3/2014
Bang: Feministisk Kulturtidskrift, Nr 4/2014
Bang: Feministisk Kulturtidskrift, Nr 1/2015
Esitys #4/2015
Girls like us, issue six/2014: Secrets
Manifesta Journal: Collective Curating No8 2009/2010
Patriotism. Art as a Present. Project of R.E.P. Group
Tulva, #3/2015
ONLINE
http://feministkilljoys.com/
https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/
BOOKS TO READ / LUKULISTALLA
Ahmed, Sara: Feminist Killjoys (And Other Willful Subjects)
Butler, Judith: Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex”
Kraus, Chris: I love Dick
Rosenberg, Tiina: Arvot mekin ansaitsemme –> VARASIN KIRJASTOSTA
Stillman, Deanne, Beatts, Anne (eds.): Titters – the first collection of humour by women
Wolmark, Jenny: Cybersexuality- A Reader in Feminist Theory, Cyborgs and Cyberspace
MAGAZINES TO READ/ LUKULISTALLA
Astra
Rookie, http://www.rookiemag.com/
She Shreds, http://sheshredsmag.com/
*Books with purple are lent from Henna Korpela’s book shelf
*Articles with red we received with the kind help of Marjukka Parkkinen
* Books with blue are lent from Minna Kaattari’s book shelf
* Book with orange is lent from Anna-Kaisa Koski’s book shelf

Talking about what feminism means to each one of us sitting around the table
11/10/2015

November 11th, 2015
11/11/2015
Brought down by vocabulary
11/11/2015
In asking “what can feminism do” I am feeling torn at the moment. It seems like there really is a need for this question, and for the conversations that follow it – in fact I feel like these two weeks are and will have to be only a start to it all, because we keep running out of time with every thought and visitor.
Sadly, though, the urgency for these discussions, and the fact that the topics do not seem to have changed much from when feminism started, I am wondering if the answer is “not much”.
How much time should change be given?
The moment that turned me on the negative trail of thought happened today, when Selina explained about an incident during which she was told that she shouldn’t use the word “pimppi”, which is a very normal Finnish word for the genitalia that at birth is assigned “female”. The story was funny; a room full of people to whom she is citing a list of words that are used for pussy, or vagina, or cunt, or whatever you may want to call it, and with every word the room goes “no you can’t say that!”. What is so scary or tabu about vaginas? I feel like writing in caps lock it’s f*#kn 2015!
This (among other things) is why I’m not sure if much has happened since burning bras.
To end on a more positive note, I want to cite researcher Kathryn QannaYahu:​
“The term cunt has been used derogatorily of women, considered an obscene word and is considered to be one of the remaining words of the English language which has the power to shock. I would much rather use “cunt” (wedge), than the Latin “vagina” which means sheath or scabbard to a warring patriarchal man’s “sword”. Personally, I believe we should reclaim this word from the misogynist patriarchal Indo-European cultures and proudly associate it with the original symbolism of one of the signs of being a woman, the fertile triangle, the source of life and our sexuality. “

gendered words edited by Orlan 10/2019

November 12th, 2015

11/12/2015
Termit ja niiden määritys tuntuu tärkeältä. Toistaiseksi ehdimme vain listata niitä //Terms and defining them feels important. So far we’ve only managed to make a start on a list (English below):
vain
kiire
päiväkoti
tyttö
välittää
vastaanottaa
tarjota
kulttuuri
rasisimi
kysymys
yhteinen
terveys
feminismi
sovinismi
yläkoulu
työ
anarkismi
tasa-arvo
feminiinisyys
maskuliinisuus
syrjintä
vähemmistö
tunne
tuntea
monimutkainen
muisti
yhteiskunta
itsestäänselvä
nauraa jollekin
ruumis
koulutus
ystävyys
toinen
me
kasvoton
näkymätön
yksityinen
julkinen
ehkäisy
hedelmällisyys
häpeä
porno
vapaus
sukupuoli
pillu
prostituutio
omistaa
rajat
moninaiusuus
lisääntyminen
toistaminen
in English:
only / just
hurry
day care
girl
to care
to receive
to offer
culture
racism
question
common
health
feminism
chauvinism
high school
work
anarchism
equality
femininity
masculinity
discrimination
minorities
feeling
to feel
complicated
memory
society
obvious
laugh at someone /thing
body
education
friendship
other
us
faceless
invisible
private
public
contraception
fertility
shame
pornography
freedom
gender
prostitution
to own
boundaries
multiplicity
reproduction

November 13th, 2015
11/13/2015
As we become acutely aware of time and not having enough of it for everything we want to do during these two weeks, we decide that this is the beginning. We take these two weeks as a time to map the subject, to discuss it with others in order to create openings into it, and to collect thoughts, references, a library, a beginning of an archive.
​Photographer Agnes Thor gives us hope and guidance quoting actress Lena Nyman in “Girls like us” 6/2014:
“When working artistically there’s always an underlying, ongoing process. One puts things off for later: ‘I’m going to read this manuscript, I just need to finish my breakfast’ or ‘just clean out this drawer.’ And then it’s easy to believe that those actions are a way of running away from doing things. But it’s important to accept that process, because when you finally make the first brush stroke and paint a blue streak, then the process is already over – the decision about that blue brush stroke happened when you did the dishes, went for a walk or met up with a friend.”
​Lena Nyman: Jag vill ju vara fri, Norstedts, 2013