Room to Bloom Festival will take place next 1-4 November 2022 in Malmö, Sweden on the theme: Celebrating Postcolonial and Ecofeminist Art & Activism. Following the artists gatherings organised by Room to Bloom programme in Athens, Palermo, Kyiv and online, we are now launching an open invitation to participate in the Room to Bloom Festival that will take place at STPLN in Malmö, Sweden on 1 – 4 November. We aspire to have a collective moment for artists and cultural professionals to network, exchange and showcase their work in Sweden’s diversity capital, Malmö.
Why ecofeminism and postcolonial feminism?
Taking place in one of the most dynamic centers of our rapidly changing world, the ecofeminism workshop taking place online and in Athens invites participants to collaborate in defining and enacting a new role of art. The participants will have a chance to learn from and create together with experts on activist, transindigenous, ecofeminist, revolutionary, and therapeutic practices.
Together, we will work on a sustainable communal art world based on an experience of harmonious coexistence with the environment and the role of the feminine in the cycle of life. What can we learn about our future from communities which still, or again, live in an unmediated relation to their, now drastically changing, living conditions?
Objectives of the Festival
- Empowering emerging artists by opening a circle of strong practitioners who shape contemporary art today for active participation in the process of transformation of the art world and our society in general.
- Knowledge sharing.
- Presenting artworks and performances.
- Creating an epistemology beyond differentiation between theoretical knowledge and physical experience through participatory artworks and practices.
Program
Tuesday 1 November
17.00: Welcome Snacks and Registration
18.00: Festival Opening
18.30: Community Bonding
19.30: Room to Bloom Song. We will collectively learn and sing together the Room to Bloom Song
20.00: Dinner
20.30 – 22.00: Moon Bloom:
- Opening Exhibitions by Anna Larsson and Corina Oancea
- The Displaced Performance by Parwana Amiri
- Spoken words by Zara Salahi
- Screening: Asphyxia – How to save the ethnological museums from suffocating? By Serena Abbondanza
Wednesday 2 November
08.30 – 09.30: Community Breakfast at STPLN
09.00 – 09.20: Meditation with Katja Ehrhardt
09.30 – 09.50: Community Time – sharing reflections
10.00 – 11.00: Protecting The Jungle: The Story of Room to Bloom
11.00 – 13.00: Community of Practice (workshops + screenings)
- I’m Circe. Workshop by Luisa Spina (part 1). The workshop is an open invitation to explore themes such as the hero/heroine journey and the human interconnectedness with nature. [Part 1] Through embodiment practices such as body movement, free drawing/painting and writing, we will work with personal histories and images to deconstruct patriarchal narratives and devise new ones in the context of performance making.
- Stitching the Future. Workshop by Zsófi Kozma (part 1). An embroidery workshop based on traditional motives from all over the world.
- Sama Community Arts Workshop by Samar Zughool. A performative journey using performing arts to unpack the terminologies of “community, identity, and citizenship” through hope and heart-based communications beyond concepts, enforced labels, and contexts.
- Screening and Discussion: Mare Mosso. Off Peak by Merle Dammhayn. The poetic-experimental documentary exemplifies ecofeminism/queer ecologist and postcolonial issues on the example of Lampedusa – a complex that reveals their structural intercorrelation and deals with their diverse forms and systemic motivations.
- Do It Yourself (DIY) Workshop. Free space for artists who would like to propose other sessions.
13.00 – 14.30: Lunch Break
14.30 – 15.30: Qi Gong with Joulia Strauss (Avtonomi Akadimia)
15.30 – 17.00: Community of Practice (workshops + screenings)
- I’m Circe. Workshop by Luisa Spina. The workshop is an open invitation to explore themes such as the hero/heroine journey and the human interconnectedness with nature. [Part 2] Through body movement, deep listening practices and voice work, we will explore kinship between the human body and the Earth through reawakening animal senses.
- Stitching the Future. Workshop by Zsófi Kozma (part 2). An embroidery workshop based on traditional motives from all over the world.
- The Memory of the Space | Space for the Memory. Workshop by Sofia Boito. This workshop was born during the lockdown period from the desire to investigate the limits of artistic languages in the virtual environment, trying to invent new strategies for an art that had to adapt itself to virtuality and distance.
- Screening “The Blue Continuum” by Magali Dougoud. The film focuses on the bodies of womxn who were found in the canals and rivers of the city of Berlin. Water intertwines the different stories and questions our aquatic pasts and submerged futures, our identities, and our relationship to nature and the dominance we exert over it.
- Do It Yourself (DIY) Workshop. Free space for artists who would like to propose other sessions.
17.30 – 19.00: Plateia: Showcasing Square
- Bioart Coven Manifesto by Siryne Eloued
- Studying the Voids of Amputation by Majdal Nateel
- Quelites by Paula Flores
- Toro Candela Corte screening by Margarita Valdivieso. Free evening in Malmö
Thursday 3 November
08.30 – 09.30: Community Breakfast at STPLN
09.00 – 09.20: Meditation with Katja Ehrhardt
09.30 – 09.50: Community Time – sharing reflections
10.00 – 11.30: Community of Practice (workshops + screenings)
- Journey to Ancestral Healing. Workshop by Valerie Tee Lee. A performative food workshop where we will explore the sensation of ancestral healing and inter-dependent care together.
- Cyanotype Printing. Workshop by Siryne Eloued. Learn about making botanical portraits using material from nature. We will create “hybrid creatures” of feminists and nature.
- The Power of Zines. Workshop by Maria Elisa Gómez (part 1). Learn about the history of zines and their use as a communication tool for underground cultures, disenfranchised communities, and political activism; see how other artists and collectives have used them in their practice; and share tools and practices for designing and facilitating zine-making community workshops.
- Do It Yourself (DIY) Workshop. Free space for artists who would like to propose other sessions.
11.30 – 13.00: Community of Practice (workshops + screenings)
- Healing Corner “Araucaria”
- Crying Yoga. Workshop by Tanja Hamester. First, we start with Tanja’s workshop which is a postcolonial collective crying exercise as a non-violent defence against racism and sexism. Crying Yoga is a non-violent way to speak up against perpetrators.
- Wintering songs: from the cradle to feminist labour struggles. Workshop by Eirini Vlavianou. Then, the second part is a workshop that would guide the participant through the practice of lullabies and its relation to care labour, decolonisation of time structures and healing.
- The Power of Zines. Workshop by Maria Elisa Gómez (part 1). Learn about the history of zines and their use as a communication tool for underground cultures, disenfranchised communities, and political activism; see how other artists and collectives have used them in their practice; and share tools and practices for designing and facilitating zine-making community workshops.
- Contemporary Ekphrasis through female gaze. Workshop by Jasmina Runevska Todorovska. A workshop to re-wake the free textual shape of the antique concept of Ekphrasis. How it will bring us closer to the female gaze. And, through sharing examples of contemporary artists, we will apply the woman writing method into a visual contemporary context.
- Do It Yourself (DIY) Workshop. Free space for artists who would like to propose other sessions.
13.00 – 14.30: Lunch Break
14.30 – 14.45: Group Photo
15.00 – 17.00: Citational Ancestry. Open mic: reading something of your favourite feminist authors, singing, storytelling, showing us a short video (7 mins maximum), etc.
18.00: Dinner
19.00 – 22.00: Room to Bloom Party
- Screening VAGUE À L’ÂME: A Black Woman Tale by Ami Weickaane
- Performance “The Harpy” by Antigone Theodorou
- Performance “Decolonial Poetry” by Dinara Rasuleva
- Performance “Fuck Borders” by Sawi Laila
- Music performance by Nora Gharyéni
- Music performance by Elee Loop
- Dancing for all the feminists out there!
Friday 4 November
08.30 – 09.30: Check-out from Hotel. Community Breakfast at STPLN
09.00 – 09.20: Meditation with Katja Ehrhardt
09.30 – 09.50: Community Time
10.00 – 11.00: Room to Bloom Manifesto for Feminist Decolonial Arts and Culture 11.00 – 12.00 Check-out and Closure
12.00: Departure. Take-away Lunch.
Ongoing:
- A linocut printing workshop (on clothing/paper) workshop by Alina Fishchuk (aka Alina Ne Alina). Please bring any fabric that you want to print on (ex. t-shirts, tote bag, etc.)
- Exhibition “Women and the experience of hyper visibility” by Anna Larsson
- Exhibition “About Masculinity” by Corina Oancea