Projects—Master PPS Performing Public Space

Jun 22

Jun 22 FEMONUMENTAL TRANSFORMANCES IN RURAL PUBLIC SPACE

FEMonumental Transformance is a transmedia performance art method to transform patriarchal monuments into feminist monumental practices. It takes place in the rural area of Vorarlberg (AT) focusing on the monuments placed there.

Kulisic & Tudman (2009) argue that monuments communicate thought, symbolism and hierarchies of a society. In a patriarchal society, these representations manifest and recreate patriarchal domination among other forms of domination, not only in public space, but also in society and in the incorporated mental structures of people (Rose 1993, Lerner 1986). The project experiments with ways to transform patriarchal monuments into feminist monumental practices using performative explorations, experimental movie making and overpainting of performance photographs. The aim here is to detect patriarchal structures and construct publicly alternative, intersectional queer feminist (hooks, Grosz, Ahmed) forms of commemoration and worshipping in their place. Part of the project is also the creation of the FEMonumental Guide, a toolkit in the form of a set of methods, which can be used by other artists to transform monuments in different socio-political contexts.

SPECIAL THANKS

Thanks to Nina Lyne Gangl for photographing and filming my performances, to my dear PPS peers and my friends for the try-outs and feedback to my Guide, to my coach Danae Theodoridou and the PPS team Heleen de Hoon, David Limaverde, Ulla Havenga and Xenia Tsompanidou. Special Thanks to my partner Matthias and to my family for their never-ending support.

Conni Holzer

Conni Holzer (1988) is a transmedia performance artist, art therapist and artistic researcher from Austria. She studied Cultural and Social Anthropology at the University of Vienna (AT), Art Therapy at the Academy for Art Therapy Vienna (AT), and completed the MA Performing Public Space at Fontys University of Applied Sciences in Tilburg (NL).

In her work, Conni addresses dominant social norms and structures, starting from individual experience, expanding from the psychological effects to the social origins. She uses art’s therapeutic and activist potential to explore contradictory paradoxical spaces within our minds, society and public spaces.

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