Her Voice Rises

Artists in the Transnational Feminist Movement to end Violence Against Women and Femmes from Antioch College on Vimeo.

“Feminist Arts Activism within the Global Movement to End Violence Against Women and Femmes.”

MAT, founded by Claudia Quiroga and Sandra Posadino in 2011, began developing a hybrid of performance and protest aimed to empower women and femmes through embodied practice and street actions in Buenos Aires. From Ni Una Menos (Not One Less) a transnational movement against femicides to Argentina’s national women’s strikes and recent efforts for reproductive rights legislation, MAT has been part of this substantial movement. MAT consists of artists, musicians, performers, student activists, teachers, housewives, and neighbors. In the artist talk, members of MAT will highlight recent actions in Argentina and invite dialogue on their strategies and international movement building. Antioch alumna, Hannah Priscilla Craig ‘17, who joined MAT for a cultural immersion cooperative education fellowship in 2016, will join them. In addition, Dawn Knickerbocker, founder of W.A.R.N. (Women of All Red Nations) Ohio, will discuss intersections with the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) movement here in North America.

Instructions for HOLDing Up / Instrucciones de SOStén from Antioch College on Vimeo.

Performed from Buenos Aires and streamed for the public via Zoom. Q&A to follow.

Translation and Subtitles: Analía Malvido and Gabriela Franco

A woman holds a kite string that stretches to the sky, she speaks to herself with verbiage for a news media outlet in the capital. It’s a suburban wasteland that could be any city. During various months she comes to HOLD Up this “utopia,” and with some complications the community supports her and helps. A poetic and theatrical performance, this new work emerged during MAT’s experience with the obligatory social isolation of the coronavirus pandemic. They have worked through this moment to maintain continuity with a series of encounters via Zoom, continuing even now, to collectivize our knowledges and carry out artivist actions virtually. Instructions for HOLDing Up is a subtle recipe for how we can create and maintain connections of solidarity and sisterhood. Dramaturgy: Claudia Quiroga. Acting: Leticia Torres.

Open to on-campus students, faculty, and staff.

Herndon Gallery, Antioch College

The exhibition includes photographs of Mujeres de Artes Tomar (Women Taking Up Art) street performances in Buenos Aires and Mar del Plata, Argentina, documenting work over the past six years. MAT coins their work as “artivismo”—melding arts activism through “rebellious joy, freedom, autonomy, fulfillment, for the exercise of our rights and the enjoyment of our lives, for a society in equity and free of all violence.” Additional works in the exhibit document MAT’s prior collaborations with Antioch students and faculty, including the 2017 Women’s Strike held on March 8th in which Antioch community members held a simultaneous arts action on campus while MAT was in the streets of Buenos Aires. Finally, images from Hannah Craig ’17 participating in MAT’s actions while on Co-op with them in 2016 were featured on the cover of various Argentine national newspapers.

For Antioch Students & Invited Guests

For those interested in the possibility of participating in a two-day morning workshop with MAT and Luisa Bieri’s winter performance class at Antioch, please send inquiries to lbieri@antiochcollege.edu.

Claudia Quiroga, author, director, teaching artist, photographer, and arts activist, co-founded the civil association Women Take Up Art (Mujeres de Artes Tomar) in November of 2011. As a precursor to MAT, Quiroga co-founded an independent theater company The Girls in White (Las Chicas de Blanco), established in 1999 and who toured the U.S in 2012. Claudia is a national superior professor of embodied expression, and teaches performance classes at CELCIT (Latin American Center for Theater Creation and Investigation) in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She is director of SHUNYA-Developer of Cultural Experiences, and holds degrees in Gender, Politics in Participation from Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento and Dramaturgy from the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature of the University of Buenos Aires (UBA). Her recent book, Rose of the Desert: Urgent theater, dramaturgy and gender, was published by Fundamental Editions in 2018 @fundamentalediciones.

Leticia Torres, actress, clown, director, and teacher, has been working in the past two years with her theater company, Compañía Terca, investigating clown corporal language and presenting new works to children and the public. As an actress, she has presented various works in diverse aesthetics, participating in festivals in Argentina and internationally. She is also a company member of Three Crazy Cats, who perform in elementary schools. She teaches clown workshops for beginners and advanced students in Buenos Aires and various seminars throughout Argentina.

Lucía Snieg, Special Education teacher, actress, musician, artist, researcher, and feminist, specializes in disability education, music therapy, and performing arts. She is pursuing an advanced degree in Special Education at the National University of General San Martín in Buenos Aires. She is a cultural producer in SHUNYA-Developer of Cultural Experiences and member of KENOBI Casa Cultural. As a Special Education teacher, Lucía works on issues of disability justice and brings this expertise to her artistic collaborations with MAT.

Luisa Bieri, Associate Professor of Cooperative Education, teaches classes at Antioch College in Performance, Cooperative Education, and Dialogue Across Difference. She holds a BA in Theater and Latin American Literature from Smith College and an MA in Comparative Women’s and Gender Studies from Utrecht University in the Netherlands. From 1999-2000 while a student at the University of Buenos Aires, she participated in actions with H.I.J.O.S. (Hijos e Hijas por la Identidad y la Justicia contra el Olvido y el Silencio: Children for Identity and Justice against Forgetting and Silence), a human rights group of children of the Disappeared—30,000 people kidnapped and murdered by the U.S.-backed military dictatorship in Argentina. She trained with Agosto and Julian Boal at the Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory in New York City and was awarded an Open Society Institute Community Fellowship at Creative Alliance in Baltimore, where she spearheaded the community arts program for five years. As a teaching artist, playwright and performer, Luisa has presented her work in Argentina, Europe, and the USA. Her most recent original one-woman show, Rites, traces a feminist genealogy of her first-generation immigrant great-great grandmother’s life-long institutionalization in a state asylum.

Dawn Knickerbocker belongs to the Anishinaabe people, is a citizen of White Earth Nation, and is an enrolled member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe from the Ottertail Pillager band of Indians. She is an environmentalist, activist, and Indigi-feminist working on culturally based sustainable development issues and decolonization in her community and on her White Earth reservation through Honor the Earth. Dawn is the current leader at the Greater Cincinnati Native American Coalition, the founder of W.A.R.N. Ohio (Women of All Red Nations), and co-leader of Ohio Mothers Out Front. She is the Director of Strategic Partnerships at Community Solutions and a columnist for The Yellow Springs News. She is a published nonfiction writer, poet, and speaker, and a recent recipient of the 2020 Martin Luther King Drum Major for Justice Award. Dawn holds a bachelor’s degree in organizational management from Whitworth University, completed graduate work in social impact from Claremont Lincoln University, and holds a master’s in arts in human rights practice from University of Arizona. Dawn is the former elected Chair of the Advisory Commission on Diversity for the most diverse city in the State of Washington, Renton, from 2006-2010. Her latest book, NAVIGATING THE PANDEMIC: Stories of Hope and Resilience, is now under contract with Page Publishing and is set to be released in December 2020. Dawn resides in Yellow Springs, Ohio with her husband and four sons.