manifestroom: Searching for Feminist Futures

• In Event: Future Ancestors, Ancestral Futures: The Aesthetic Enactment of Feminist Imaginaries

Abstract

This paper considers the critical work of the feminist manifesto as a document informed by the past but envisioned for the future. It does this through a study of the performance project manifestroom (2014): a conceptual action headquarters, a meeting place for contemporary political needs, and a space for interaction with historical documents from radical and artistic movements from around the globe, such as Idle No More, Yvonne Rainer, and Valerie Solanas’s Scum Manifesto. This paper will consider the live manifestos written during the performance in 2014 in the gallery space as they inform on our contemporary moment in 2018.

Presenter

• Lilian Mengesha, Tufts University