Personal is Political and Public Privatised

This year’s festival has as many as two main subjects which are structured around public space and the invisible, unpaid and precarious work. Although they don’t seem to have much in common at first sight, they are actually closely related. Indeed, they are both drawn to attention because of the same dominant ideology of private property and the consequent all-encompassing privatisation and constant economic growth that lead to cuts in everything that enters the public sphere. Cuts in the public sector, cuts in social and other rights, cuts in salaries and subventions, cuts in project funds –in short, cuts in everything that allowed for a more or less decent life of nine-tenths of the population so that the upper tenth could have more than it could possibly spend (not to mention that famous 1%).And one has a sick feeling in the stomach caused by anxiety and nausea due to excessive debt, poverty and social injustice. When the state stops caring about the public good and consequently about  people, the latter are left to the mercy of the open market, which has just one goal: to generate as much profit as possible for investors, at any cost and in any way. Thirst for wealth and prestige is stronger than humanity and people become tools, objects to be easily tossed away after serving their purpose.

Today, countries are totally subjected to this ideology; they create social conditions in which capital rules, yields and grows but remains in the pockets of a few because the mechanisms of redistribution that used to provide welfare to all through the system of social rights and generally accessible public services and public spaces are disappearing. Privatisation of the public good is nothing but the fact that the most basic needs indispensable for survival have to be paid more for than they actually cost, all so that the owners can generate profit. And you make more profit if people are paid less than they actually deserve; it’s even better if they don’t get paid at all. The discursive formation of social parasites and cheaters who suck blood (money) from industrious and hardworking wealthy men by drawing state subventions or exercising their right to financial social assistance has gotten us to the point where it is perfectly acceptable to demand internships be unpaid (young people should invest something in their job in order to prove that they deserve employment) and to demand mandatory work requirements for jobseekers or welfare recipients (they should sweep streets, clean out cesspits, clear overgrown forests or take seasonal work – who do they think they are?!),while likewise, self-employed workers in culture, journalism, dressmaking, construction, etc., should make an effort to get a job (their prices should be competitive and they’d have enough work, right?).

Neoliberalism could have never spread to such an extent had it not enjoyed the strong support of not only governments but also of the people for whom it came naturally to start believing in parasites, cheaters and exploiters as well as in the justness of social inequalities. Such a mentality prevents even revolts from standing uniform on basic issues such as what it is necessary to fight against and what to fight for. Although the winter protests were something of the best that could happen to us, their lost potential also pointed out their weaknesses. One of these was definitely their relationship to inequality. Although we could read on signs at every protest appeals to strengthen the social state, we could, on the other hand, also see the formation of centres of power, hierarchy and representations that were unambiguously unisexual. It was obvious (the same as many times before) that not even the left is capable of realising how inequalities are formed and reproduced. At the demonstrations, the City of Women was in the background, behind, invisible – and once again we had to organise separately to create spaces in which we could speak up and demand the right to the public and to public spaces. In this respect, the City of Women Festival was re-actualised in its original purpose as a space where women can speak since other places are constantly reduced and donor enable a plural diversity of protagonists. There is a field of feminist activism that has over the recent years somewhat timidly pulled back (although it never disappeared) because it seemed to be superfluous and no longer needed. But at present, feminism deals a lot less with the situation of women in society and ever more with the situation of oppressed minorities; its objective is in particular the disclosing of the mechanisms of oppression and hegemony of any kind.

Thus, this year’s festival will occupy open and closed public spaces in Ljubljana. Through a revival of history, the artists will remind us that women have always been activists and protagonists in historical events. They made history with their work, although not the military or party kind, and a walkthrough pre-war women’s spaces accompanied by their stories and testimonies will prove that.  The words of Emma Goldman and Rosa Luxemburg inspired the performance about what happened to women who spoke out and exposed their bodies for greater social justice. However, contemporary artists also expose their bodies, and at the festival they will take us all the way from a tree to money, through suffering and pleasure, protest and rebellion to a testimony of experiences on Tahrir Square or testimonies about gender that is actually not gender or is different from what it might seem. A mysterious conclusion is a starting point from which to research, to be present and participating, to experience and comprehend, to gain an insight into something that is not common but a little bit scary and uncomfortable and hence a lot more compelling and tempting. Come and see – you will definitely survive – although the images will cross your mind for a while after the festival’s end. You are most welcome!