Ghouls, Gendered Ghosts, and Democratic Discussion (The Secret Ingredient - 23-10-13)

The Secret Ingredient

As Halloween approaches, we talk haunted houses, specifically Killjoy’s Kastle by Allyson Mitchell. Filled with, demented women’s studies professors, straw feminists, and the ghost of Valerie Solanas and gravestones marking the death of the Gender Binary, this feminist haunted house demands that you actively participate in the work. The project also offered the chance to reflect on your experience in a processing room with real-life feminist killjoys like Anne Cvetkovich. However, it is also recently the subject of an active online conversation about restrictive spaces and the more complex aspects of feminism’s ghosts. In this context we also discuss Suzanne Lacy’s Between a Door and The Street, a project in New York that brought different groups of people together to discuss themes of poverty and economy. We explore questions of representation, exploitation, inclusiveness, and remember art cannot be all things for everyone. What methods can we explore to facilitate dialogue? Bishop, Claire. Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship. London: Verso Books, 2012.