Present Futures: Experiments in Feminist Futurity
- The Forum at the Annenberg School for Communication, 3620 Walnut St., Philadelphia
A contemporary art exhibition envisioning feminist solidarities across space and time, in everyday life, with an outlook towards “the future we want to see, right now, in the present”
“Present Futures: Experiments in Feminist Futurity” is a contemporary art exhibition that will open the two-day Transnational Feminist Networks Symposium from September 12-13th, 2024 at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. The exhibition will be displayed in The Forum of the Annenberg School for Communication (ASC) during the fall semester, from mid-August to late November 2024. Symposium organizers are currently seeking submissions from artists who creatively engage the symposium's themes, specifically envisioning feminist solidarities across space and time, in everyday life, with an outlook towards “the future we want to see, right now, in the present.” Follow on Instagram for updates: @tfn_presentfutures
Exhibition Inspiration
In recent years, popular mobilizations like #MeToo, the traveling protest chant ‘Un violador en tu camino,’ and the International Women’s March have contributed to a global feminist resurgence. These moments of heightened visibility inspire, uplift, and illuminate pressing concerns facing women and gender-diverse individuals around the world but often eclipse the ongoing work at the grassroots level amidst seemingly insurmountable odds. Present Futures: Experiments in Feminist Futurity aims to highlight the undercurrents of popular feminisms — the acts, rituals, and practices that sustain transnational feminist solidarities and networks of care.
Beyond a sense of hope for a future we’d like to see from the top-down, our exhibition is inspired by Tina Campt’s proposal for a “grammar of black feminist futurity” that attends to the undercurrents of futurity evident in the present, the everyday, and the quotidian. She describes this revolutionary grammar (in the future real conditional) as a performance of a future that has not yet happened but must. Present Futures: Experiments in Feminist Futurity invites artists to meditate upon the quieter registers of feminist futurity that we can begin to imagine, live, and embody in the present.
We seek submissions that interpret the quotidian practices of the everyday as a means of consistently cultivating radical feminist knowledges, sustaining networks of care, and articulating communal resistance, within and beyond territorial borders, in often unspectacular and unglamorous ways.
More information about the exhibition is forthcoming.
Disclaimer: This event may be photographed and/or video recorded for archival, educational, and related promotional purposes. We also may share these video recordings through Annenberg's website or related platforms. Certain events may also be livestreamed. By attending or participating in this event, you are giving your consent to be photographed and/or video recorded and you are waiving any and all claims regarding the use of your image by the Annenberg School for Communication. The Annenberg School for Communication, at its discretion, may provide a copy of the photos/footage upon written request.