summer heated debate on information.dk

Lone Nørgaard means that the battle for equality between the sexes has destroyed women's care gene. According to her it's time to acknowledge; women have to choose between having children and having a carreer. That provokes - even in the summer heat... Check the article that started it & the debate here.

ipetition: more real girls in disney/pixar films

Anne Gjelsvik, NTNU, comments upon the ongoing Ipetition at BareAre P3 (in Norwegian) - follow the link, and sign up ;)

Dr. Ed Catmull, President
Pixar
Pixar Animation Studios
1200 Park Avenue
Emeryville, California 94608

Robert A. Iger, Chief Executive Officer
Disney
500 S. Buena Vista St.
Burbank, CA 91521-9722

Dear Dr. Catmull and Mr. Iger,

We read Linda Holmes’s wonderful letter to Pixar (link below) asking you to create a feature film with a girl or women as the main character. We’ve had enough of Disney princesses with doe eyes and Barbie doll bodies. We love your inventive, brilliant movies. We know you have it in you. We loved feisty Princess Atta in A Bug’s Life and Dreamworks' Princess Fiona of Shrek was our kind of girl, but the stories weren’t theirs to tell, nor the journeys theirs to take. We want a female LEAD character, a nonprincess LEAD character who is complex and interesting. While you’re at it, could you give her a passion for something other than fashion and shopping, and how about a realistic body type? Girls are 25% of characters in animated films and 52% of the population. Research tells us boys care less about gender than interesting characters. They’ll watch if she’s cool enough. Come on, give us just one. If you make it, we will come to the theaters in droves. Promise!

Sincerely,

Your concerned customers

Linda Holmes’s wonderful letter to Pixar: http://www.npr.org/blogs/monke...

snart ferie -

 - hva med en tur til Paris hvor Centre Pompidou viser en stor utstilling med samlingens kvinnelige kunstnere?

For the first time in the world, a museum will be displaying the feminine side of its own collections. This new presentation of the Centre Pompidou's collections will be entirely given over to the women artists from the 20th century to the present day.

vil du vite mer? ta en kikk her

ATHENA3

Athena 3 is the thematic network for education in gender and women's studies in Europe, and these days they are organising their yearly conference for their member organisations. I am attending on behalf of the University of Stavanger, being the only Norwegian university that is represented this year. This is a bit strange, actually, because other Norwegian universities have developed several courses in gender studies, and I would have thought them interested in a larger thematic European network. However, as Stavanger is a network in the developing stages, maybe we are more eager to form new networks. In light of our current discussions on interdisciplinarity and the interrelations between theory and practice, this is certainly worthwhile. The notion of traveling pedagogy and traveling concepts is really fruitful to work with!

As an organisation, ATHENA is restructuring. One of the strategies for the organisation is to acquire new members, particularly from the fields of curating, performative arts, architecture and museum pedagogy. This sounds like something that would be highly relevant for the Stavanger milieu, don't you think?

Joining ATHENA is free, and through your membership you get access to workshops, conferences, policy making processes, course material and courses. Only organisations can be members of the Network, but this new inscentive means that any museum or architect office can join and constribute to develop their fields of expertise in a gender persepctive.

You can read more about ATHENA here!

åsa linderborg in stavanger

Yesterday Åsa Linderborg - author of the autobiografical Mig äger ingen (2008) - visited Stavanger. The Network of Gender Studies together with Sølvberget - The Culture House - organized an author meeting, where Linderborg was interviewed by Kristin Aalen (Stavanger Aftenblad). Those of us who had found our way to the Kult.Kafé last night witnessed an open hearted, personal, touching, funny, serious, painful and brutally sincere conversation that in a number of ways reproduced central aspects of the award winning book; class, gender, family structures - and love. Linderborg's book has been on the top 12 list of popular books at the library in Stavanger all winter - as certainly also in numerous other libraries. The book in a stirring manner depicts the love that somehow dominated her growing up with with the alcoholic working class single father Leif in the 1970s. And yesterday she spoke warmly about adults who want to take care of children, no matter whether they're mummy and mummy or daddy and daddy or daddy or mummy or both or biological or whatever;

'jag tror inte vi behöver kärnfamiljen. men vi behöver att älska någon. och att bli älskad.
men kärleken kan se ut hur som helst!"

Definitely recommended...

study circle 09 - first meeting

Bjørg and Sigrun guided us through an inspiring night of discussion starting off from Peggy Phelan's essay Art and Feminism. The group is bigger, has several new members with various backgrounds and constellations that will surely bring along the spirit from the former study circles (of which the later ended with the STING conference in November 2008).

Art and Feminism

For de av dere som har lyst til å kjøpe Helena Reckitt & Peggy Phelans Art and Feminism, velg gjerne den rimeligere paperbackutgaven fra 2006. Det ser ut som om det er vanskelig å få tak i nye utgaver av boka, men forsøk gjerne å kjøpe brukt - (er mulig gjennom Amazon's sider)

Mierle Laderman Ukeles: Hartford Wash: Washing, Tracks, Maintenance: Outside, 1973 performance at Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT, part of Maintenance Art Performance Series, 1973-74

After child-birth in 1968, Ukeles became a mother/maintenance worker and fell out of the picture of the avant-garde. In a rage, she wrote the Manifesto for Maintenance Art 1969, applied equally to the home, all kinds of service work, the urban environment, and the sustenance of the earth itself. She viewed the Manifesto as “a world vision and a call for revolution for the workers of survival who could, if organized, reshape the world.”