DORA GARCÍA: REVOLUTION, FULFIL YOUR PROMISE!

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Demonstrator (Sra. Margarita Robles de Mendoza) in Mexico, 1934; the sign reads: “Revolution, fulfill your promise, emancipate women!” Photo: Casasola, Fototeca Nacional, Mexico City, INAH.

This encounter/workshop with Dora García, to be held on 15 November 2021, is divided into two parts: an introduction to her project Amor Rojo, and a group reading session.

Si pudiera desear algo / If I Could Wish For Something (2021), a film and part of Amor Rojo, will be presented in the framework of 63 ZINEBI International Festival of Documentary and Short Film of Bilbao.

PROGRAMME

Monday 15 November 2021, 17:00
¡Revolución, cumple tu promesa!
Encounter/workshop with Dora García
Venue: Bulegoa z/b
Entrance: Free

Wednesday 17 November 2021, 18:00
Si pudiera desear algo / If I Could Wish For Something (2021)
Screening and conversation between Dora García and Itziar Okariz
Venue: Auditorium, Bilbao Fine Arts MuseumÇ
Entrada: 3,50€

¡Revolución, cumple tu promesa!
All revolutions have been begun, protagonized or sustained by female figures: Louise Michel in the Paris Commune; the women who demonstrated for bread during the 1917 February Revolution which proceeded the October Revolution; the Soldaderas or Adelitas of the Mexican Revolution; women like Kathleen Cleaver and Assata Shakur of the Black Panthers; Rosa Luxemburg, Clara Zetkin and Alexandra Kollontai; and many others. Yet the revolution always seems to overlook them, with the demands of “women’s issues” being perpetually postponed: socialism must come first, then women’s liberation. In recent years we continue to hear that the preoccupations of the working class will never be gender issues or intersectionality. And we are tired; it seems obvious that for decades now, the revolutionary subject is no longer the “working class”, but women (cis and trans), sexual dissidents, migrants, the racialised subject and the subjects of precarity in general. Who, in spite of centuries of disappointment, still believe in revolution. Revolution must simply fulfil its promise, which is to emancipate all women.

Dora García’s latest film and text project, Amor Rojo, investigates the relations between socialism and feminism and their melancholy wake of disenchantment and resistance.

This encounter/workshop has two parts, consisting firstly of an introduction to the Amor Rojo project, and secondly of a group reading and discussion of the “letters of disappointment”, a collection of letters written by women to their lovers, companions, leaders and readers, which show how the personal is political even at the most melancholy of times.

To take part in the encounter/workshop and be sent the selected readings, please contact bulegoa@bulegoa.org

Dora García is an artist, teacher and researcher who lives and works in Barcelona and Oslo. As an artist, she has participated in numerous international art exhibitions including the Münster Skulptur Projekte (2007), the Venice Biennale (2011, 2013, 2015), the Sydney Biennial (2008), the São Paulo Biennial (2010), Documenta 13 (2012), the Gwangju Biennial (2016), the osloBiennalen, Art Encounters Timisoara and the AICHI Triennial (2019). In 2021 she developed projects in the Fotogalleriet Oslo, Netwerk Aalst, the Mattatoio di Roma, and the Colomboskope Festival in Sri Lanka. Her work is largely performative and deals with issues related to community and individuality in contemporary society, exploring the political potential of marginal positions, paying homage to eccentric characters and to antiheroes, who have often been the center of her films projects, such as The Deviant Majority (2010), The Joycean Society (2013) and Segunda Vez (2018).

This event is supported by the Foundation for Arts Initiatives (FFAI), New York.