ART TALKING WOMEN: a little history

ART TALKING WOMEN is a series of 10 -12 minute conversations with women artists about their creative process as well as their relationship with community and technology. The artists reflect the diversity in my communities of Richmond, Vancouver, The Eternal Network, The Art World, Parallel/Underground Galleries and Virtual Culture Centres of the World Wide Web. ART TALKING WOMEN is a cultural, political and pedagogical strategy to bring women artists, particularly BC women artists, into the forefront of international discussions of art and culture especially discussion about performance and new media practices.

ART TALKING WOMEN provides space for practicing women artists to talk with other practicing women artists. It explores how each artist makes art, what art means to them, and their relationship with technology and community. ART TALKING WOMEN thinks locally by reaching IN to BC women artists and acts globally by broadcasting their stories OUT to the international community
ART TALKING WOMEN began while CINEVOLUTION created my retrospective for Your Kontinent Festival July 2012 . The subject of Women and Technology came from our many discussions which lead us to interview artists Lorna Boschman, Eileen Kage, Tsuneko Kokubo and Dinka Pignon. We realized we had wonderful stories about each artist’s creative process as well as her relationship to technology and her community. Clearly, these artists were part of a much bigger story.

Our first season of artists were interviewed in my apartment, at my kitchen table, over tea and my home-made baking. Season two artists were interviewed in their studios, at live Google+ & UTube broadcasts with multiple projections, and during a walk-and-talk through urban gardens tended and employed by the artist as resource for art making. ART TALKING WOMEN will soon be subtitled into Chinese to reach internet cafes and mp3-mpeg download sites in China.

I strongly believe it is unwise to leave the discussion of art solely to the museum and academe. I am neither anti-academe nor anti-art market. Some of my best friends have a PhD. But the academe and art market provide only one way of viewing art and culture and they employ a specific language. Art and Culture making has MANY faces, MANY ways of seeing and MANY languages and it is our hope that ART TALKING WOMEN will provide access for the voice of these women artists to speak out and with the world.