Cuisine Interne Keuken (Stirring the Pot and Showing the Seams)

Cuisine Interne Keuken - Stirring the Pot and Showing the Seams
Mobile investigation on (feminist) cultural practice as work
Laurence Rassel, Marie-Françoise Stewart-Ebel, Wendy Van Wynsberghe, Digitales - ADA / Constant vzw, Brussels

"Five years after the birth of my feminist consciousness, I still have to question every assumption, every reaction I have in order to examine them for signs of preconditioning. (...) I thought serious artists had to have big, professional-looking spaces. I found women in corners of men's studios, in bedrooms and children's rooms, even in kitchens, working away. I thought important art was large. I found women working small, both out of inclination and necessity." (Lucy Lippard, The Pink Glass Swan)

Where do we/you work - in a kitchen, factory, shop, studio, office, on a spaceship, stage, or in a feminist festival? How do we work, for whom and for what? What is work, its historical, economic, political and aesthetic process? For which society do we work? Who has the information and the answers? Could an artist be a model worker, a woman a model citizen?
Three women investigate the City of Women, listing the ingredients, exchanging recipes. They put into practice one or two things they have learnt in their own practice and life as artists, non-artist, workers and organisers of Digitales working days in Brussels and in other 'feminist cultural events' elsewhere.
Their work has started by squatting the programme. They set up their workstation. Their workbench is mobile. They carry their digital tools and a non-multiple choice questionnaire. They invite you to share their utensils, work with their tools. They ask questions. They attempt to reveal the process of the event, deconstruct a reality to inspire another approach the meaning of women's politics. Look for them, don't miss them.

HUMAN COMPONENTS

Laurence Rassel is a Cyberfeminist and member of Constant vzw, an artist-run organisation in Brussels which links artistic and theoretical thinking on the Internet and digital communication. Constant is active in gender issues, alternatives to copyright, networks, etc, developing projects in different places and within different layers of the code behind the digital media. Together with Interface3, a centre for women's vocational training and the ADA network programme for women and technology, since 2001 Laurence has organised Digitales, a working conference, which brings together women from various backgrounds dealing with new technologies.

Marie-Françoise Stewart-Ebel, a paradoxical* feminist for 30 years, hands in the pot of gender politics and still an optimist activist, is firmly looking towards the future, inspired by the generations of feminists who kept questioning the societies in which they lived to invent better ones: suffragettes, socialists, pacifists, ecofeminists, cyberfeminists, and lesbians. She co-founded Interface3asbl and the European Network of Women in the 80s. She is an active Woman in Black, co-organiser of Digitales, and aids other women's projects. Officially, a free-lance translator and mother of four adult children.
*as in paradoxical sleep: the phase of sleep when dreams occur.

Wendy Van Wynsberghe reported on the 'Cyberfeminist Working Days', organised by Constant vzw in 2000. She recorded events and conducted interviews. She was astonished by the content, the people, and positively intrigued with an aftertaste of "More of this, please!" and "What is this? I like what it's doing to my brain". As the years passed, her involvement with Constant grew from opening beers behind the bar and chatting, to making microphone cables and letting those brains work again. She has participated in Digitales and became a do-it-all and DIY element of Constant. This goes from photocopying to calling ministries asking how they work and getting an answer! This year has been under the sign of money and funding - Constant's, Wendy's, governments' - finding out how that all works. Besides the Constant- persona, she is a musician under the stage names Wy and Remork, and an occasional member of the noise impro 'band' R.O.T.
City of Women crew and artists, the public

INGREDIENTS AND COOKING TIME

One questionnaire for a 6-morning mobile investigation on (feminist) cultural practice as work
(2. - 7. 10., all festival locations)

1. Name, forename
2. Age
3. Place of birth and current geographical location
4. Academic background, if any
5. Number of dependents
6. How would you define your activity/job/profession?
7. How do you introduce yourself to someone?
8. Can you make a living from it? If not, how do you make a living?
9. Do you have a price list/fees?
How are they calculated?
10. Who pays the price/fees (public authorities, institutions, private clients, companies,
audiences, other)? What are the conditions?
11. Do you retain ownership of your work/works once transferred? With what, with
whom?
12. Please, specify the equipment/materials used in your work and their origin.
More generally, what form does this investment take: collective buying, loan, gift, etc?
13. Do you work in group, if so, with whom, why?
14. Other questions, other answers

One parked workstation for 6 afternoon technical work sessions
(02 - 07.10., Kinodvor, lobby)
Debriefing the mobile investigation. Discover, learn how to be an investigator and exchange techniques, digital tools and practice with the team of The Cuisine Interne Keuken. Learn open-source audio software with Wendy. Ask the questions that we did not ask.

One contextual breakfast to discuss conditions of work in a cultural world
(03.10, 11 a.m., Kinodvor, lobby)
The Cuisine Interne Keuken team will provide questions and reflections on our/your/their conditions of work, creation and production in 'new cultural capitalist economies'. Who asks the questions? Who gives the answers? Who defines the rules and controls? With the City of Women crew and every (cultural?) worker welcome!

One audio performance
(07.10., 7 p.m., Kinodvor)
Echoes of Things Heard + Performing Q&A - or how does your 'kitchen of life' work? - a.k.a. CIK Wendy van Wynsberghe will use the gathered and processed audio material collected during the week through the questionnaire and diverse actions, in a humorous and interactive performance.
Laurence Rassel

Cuisine Interne Keuken - Stirring the Pot and Showing the Seams
Mobile investigation on (feminist) cultural practice as work
Laurence Rassel, Marie-Françoise Stewart-Ebel, Wendy Van Wynsberghe; Digitales - ADA / Constant vzw, Brussels (Belgium)

Programme:

Sat., Oct. 2 - Thur., Oct. 7.:
Mobile investigation - all festival locations
Sun., Oct. 3, 11 a.m.:
Working Station & Contextual Breakfast, Kinodvor lobby
Thur., Oct. 7, 7 p.m.:
Echoes on Things Heard + Performing Q&A, Kinodvor
In English

Organisation: City of Women
In co-operation with: Digitales - ADA / Constant vzw, Brussels; Kinodvor