The Gossips lecture series aims to bring women together, to re-generate and re-perform the original concept of 'the gossip', which originally meant a female companion, as a support structure for women's ideas, thinking processes and exchanges.
Gossips seeks to collectivise feminist discourse and create a platform through which there can be new utterances to counteract all the words used to define and degrade women, deconstructing and unpacking them. The series is curated by iLiana Fokianaki.
These discursive gatherings were inspired by Silvia Federici's book Witches, Witch-Hunting and Women. Aiming to offer an open dialogue with its audiences, the series engages with real-life case studies and shares non-linear knowledge that break epistemic injustice; knowledge that wishes to operate contrary to the sexist rhetoric and patriarchal modes of conduct that we witness in culture and society, by way of practising and being otherwise, as cultural workers and women.
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the programme continues its presence online. Exploring three formats of 'women gathering', it highlights the diverse ways that women discourse and exchange knowledge, experiences and information. Each event starts with the release of recorded materials, followed by a live conversation the week after. The archive of recordings is continuously updated, and can be found below.
Do Comrades Gossip?
9 November 2019
The Younger Proverbs (detail) by Pieter Brueghel
The first meeting on 9 November 2019 began with a lecture by professor of political science Jodi Dean.
Revisiting Gossips with Simon(e) van Saarloos
21 May 2020
As the first meeting remains an experience through presence, it is archived through a response of a member of the audience, the writer and philosopher Simon(e) van Saarlos.
Gossips, Defiant Muses and Camp Sisterhood
25 June 2020
Making of Delphine Seyrig's video "Be Beautiful and Shut Up!" (Sois belle et tais-toi!): Delphine Seyrig and Carole Roussopoulos interviewing Maria Schneider, 1976, courtesy: Archives Seyrig.
The second meeting involves the act of listening to recorded lectures and a live conversation between iLiana Fokianaki, theorist Elisabeth Lebovici and curator Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez.
Slut-shaming, Female Sexuality and the Free Woman
7 July 2020
Protesters at a Chicago Slutwalk demonstration in 2013 (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
The third meeting explores the act of listening to a recorded lecture and operates as a reading group, analysing the propositions of theorist Oxana Timofeeva.