An apparently simple conversation about an apparently complicated theme: feminism.
The Dutch actress and singer Margo van de Linde, who grew up in America, gladly calls herself a feminist. Yet she does not often admit it in conversations. She cannot exactly identify why. If feminism is such a difficult concept or territory for her, what is it like for others?
Feminism is laden with history, is clouded by theoretical texts, and leads to widely diverse opinions. Sharing our opinions brings risks. What if someone realizes that we have not actually read everything that Simone de Beauvoir or Sojourner Truth actually wrote? What happens if we think something that deviates from the norm (and what actually is the norm)? Uncertainty stops us from speaking out, when it is precisely that – avoiding the subject – that keeps sexist tendencies afloat.
Improvised Feminism is an alternative place of learning, an intimate circle of no more than 12 people in which a conversation is engaged for which personal experience and knowledge form a basis. Two actresses lead the whole in an almost invisibly defined path by way of improvisation and a good joke.
As part of TASHWEESH, a 10-day multidisciplinary festival about feminism in the Middle-East, North Africa and Europe. w/ Goethe-Institut Brüssel
photo: Karin van de Wiel
