Ann-Sofie Öman on Freedom is Always Freedom for the One Who Thinks Differently by Neda R. Bric

Windows can be used for many things. The performance Freedom is Always Freedom for the One Who Thinks Differently, by Neda R. Bric, is performed through windows, open windows, where elegant women dressed in black and red are displaying themselves by quoting and reading out loud from books written by women, who have gained a reputation as intellectuals and front figures in the feminist movement. Anyone who has knowledge of what Rosa Luxemburg, Emma Goldman and other well-known feminists stated in their manifestos, can get a picture of what is going on. But as the performance is in Slovene, and my Slovene isn't good enough for understanding everything that is said, I don't know what else they are saying. And they are saying quite a lot more. At the end of the performance they are even dancing in the windows - and this gives me an odd feeling.

Women dressed in red and black dancing in windows is a sight you can see in the so called red light districts in cities like Hamburg and Amsterdam. Those women are selling their bodies.

I must confess that I'm confused by the different messages that I get from this performance. Is someone trying to replace the old couple "the Madonna and the Whore" with "the Intellectual and the Whore", or what is going on?

Maybe there is a clue somewhere among the Slovene words that I don't understand.

Ann-Sofie Öman
Covering City of Women for the Swedish magazine Danstidningen