“MISPLACED WOMEN?” installation is on exhibit at the Feminism Is Politics! exhibition curated by Olga Kopenkina, in Pratt Manhattan Gallery, New York, September 28–November 23, 2016.

Misplaced Women? installation view at  Feminism Is Politics!, Pratt Manhattan Gallery, New York. Photo: Tanja Ostojić

“MISPLACED WOMEN?”  

Performance series 2009–2016 / Project’s Archive, mixed media installation include:

 “Misplaced Women?” Performance by Tanja Ostojić
1-channel digital video, 28:16min, 2016
Video recording of the performance in Göteborg International Airport, Sweden.
September 2, 2015. Live Action 10

Tanja Ostojić / Marta Nitecka Barche: “Misplaced Women?”
Banner 49,5 X 181,5 cm, 2016, Canvas, marker, embroidery

 

21 photographs from the following performances:
1) Performance by Hyla Willis. Central train station Zagreb, Croatia, June, 25, 2009, during the PSi conference Zagreb. Photo: subRosa.
2) Delegated performance by Valentina Medda , during festival Performa. White Box, New York City. November 21, 2009, 5 pm, New York time.
3) Performance by Tanja Ostojić, November 21, 2009, 11 pm Berlin time (5pm New York time, simultaneously with Valentina Medda), at the Tegel airport Berlin, Germany. Photos: DNK.
4) “Misplace Women?” sign held by Wai Wai at the arrival section, Zürich International Airport, Switzerland, October 25, 2012. Photo: Tanja Ostojić.
5) ”Misplace Women?” sign held by Amy Bryzgel, on Aberdeen International Airport, Scotland, March 31, 2015. Photo: Tanja Ostojić.
6) “Misplaced Women? Marking the City.” Performance by Kwestan Jamal Bawan at Western Union, Bergen, Norway, November 2, 2011 at 12:55.pm. Organised by Stiftelsen 3,14. Photo: Mariel Lødum.
7) Performance by Tanja Ostojić on the Bergen International Airport. November 8, 2011. Production: Stiftelsen 3,14, Bergen, Norway. Photos: Jannicke Olsen.
8) Performance by Sigrid Pawelke, (during the “Missplaced Women?” workshop conducted by Tanja Ostojić). Shopping district, Aix-en-Provence, France, December 16, 2015. Photos: Tanja Ostojić.
9) Performance by Anaïs Clercx, at Préfecture d’Aix-en-Provence / Police headquarters, City of Aix-en-Provence, France, during the “Missplaced Women?” workshop with Tanja Ostojić. December 16, 2015. Photo: Tanja Ostojić.
10) Performance by Ashley McNaughton on Torry bridge, Aberdeen, Scotland, UK, during the “Misplaced Woman?” workshop with Tanja Ostojić in Torry neighbourhood, organised as a part of the Aberdeen Festival of Politics 2016. March 10, 2016. Photo: Renée Slater.
11) Performances by Kirsty Russell and Marta Nitecka Barche in front of the public library in Torry, as a part of “Misplaced Woman?” workshop with Tanja Ostojić during the Aberdeen Festival of Politics 2016. March 10, 2016. Other participants: Amy Bryzgel, Caroline Gausden, Sarah Jackson, Karolina Kubik, Angela Margaret Main, Ashley McNaughton, Marta Nitecka Barche, Tanja Ostojić, Kirsty Russell, Francesco Sani, Renée Slater, Gabriel Tracy, Rowan Young and many other amassing people. Photo: Renée Slater.
Performance by Tanja Ostojić on the La Grand Escalier de la Gare du 12) Saint Charles / railway station, Marseille, France 2013. Participants: Helen Averley, Alix Denambride, Robyn Hambrook, Tanja Ostojić, Kim Mc Cafferty, Jane Kay Park, Emma Edvige Ungaro and Patricia Verity. Production: Préavis de Désordre Urbain and Red Plexus, Marselle. Photos: Anne Carles.
13) Performance by Tanja Ostojić, Göteborg city center tram station, Sweden, September 4, 2015. Production: Live Action 10, Photo: Xiao Lu.
14) Marija Jevtić, Tanja Ostojić, Suncica Šido and Nela Antonović performing “Misplaced Women?” inside the Info Park, Central Bus station Belgrade, Serbia, as one of the group performances in public spaces in Belgrade, conducted on October 29, 2015, during “Misplaced Woman?” workshop with Tanja Ostojić, thematising solidarity with the refuges on the Balkan route. Organised as a part of the From Diaspora to Diversity, Remont, Belgrade, Serbia. Participants: Nela Antonović, Gorana Bačevac, Tatjana Beljinac, Tamara Bijelić, Jelena Dinić, Irena Đukanović, Milica Janković, Marija Jevtić, Nadežda Kirćanski, Irena Mirković, Bojana Radenović, Sanja Solunac, Sunčica Šido. Photo: Lidija Antonović.
15) Performance by Tanja Ostojić on the Central bus station in Varaždin, Croatia, Jun 11, 2016. Production: Dani performansa, Varaždin, Croatia. Photo: Vedran Hunjek.

Written stories by:
Helen Averley, Belfast, Northern Ireland
Marta Nitecka Barche, Aberdeen, Scotland
Anaïs Clercx, Marseille, France
Mmakgosi Kgabi, Gaborone, Botswana
Tanja Ostojić, Berlin, Germany
Sigrid Pawelke, Aix-en-Provence, France
Jasmina Tešanović, women without homeland, who lives and works on-line.

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I am pleased that our installation has been set up so well and I am grateful to all the participants for all your generous contributions to the project!!! – Tanja Ostojić

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Feminism Is Politics! is an inquiry into what is conceptualized by feminists and queer/lesbians in the 21st century as New Feminism. The exhibition features video, performance works and art activism that address the feminist position in action and redefine the notion of “political” within the new millennium’s paradigm of uncertainty and precarity.

Artists included: 

Pauline Boudry/Renate Lorenz
Bureau of Melodramatic Research
Melanie Cervantes
Regina José Galindo
Gluklya (Natalia Pershina-Yakimanskaya)
Victoria Lomasko
Liza Morozova
Mujeres Públicas
Tanja Ostojić
YES! Association / Föreningen JA!
Anna Zvyagintseva

More about the exhibition: https://www.pratt.edu/events/exhibitions/pratt-manhattan-gallery/

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New York, Performa, White Box, November 21, 2009, 5 p.m.

 

Misplaced Women?

Performed by Valentina Medda

I started 45 minutes long performance Misplaced Women? from the White Box Gallery, from where I went to the near by park, and returned back to the gallery. It was important to me that the point of departure and arrival were the same place, while changes were occurring to my identity. Once you’ve left, it’s impossible to ever “come back home” even if you go to that place you still call home. But you never come back, and it’s not home anymore.

Valentina Medda: Misplaced Women?, Performa New York, 2009. Simultanious delegated perfromance with Tanja Ostojic, at Berlin TXL airport.

I wanted my woman to be beautiful and feminine in order not to be confused with other inhabitants of the street: tourists, citizens, homeless… I wanted her to be “something else”, someone who can’t be immediately defined. I wanted to preserve her dignity, that we all as immigrants are often forced to loose while getting accepted by a foreign country. I wanted my woman to get slowly undressed in her process of packing and unpacking. Gently and slowly, the clothes she was wearing became part of the luggage she’s been caring around, as a metaphor of what she’s loosing on the way, but she’s been keeping in her memory, somewhere. Something hidden that could come out any time…

Valentina Medda is New York based performance artist of Italian origin.

New York, Performa, White Box, November 21, 5 p.m.

New York City, Performa

You are invited to perform delegated performance Misplaced Women? while mapping New York City in another way during the entire month of November, and to share your experience on the web.
Locations for performances suggested by the artist include: train stations (inside and outside); women’s house, (in front or inside); refugee camps for illegalized people, shopping malls/market places; ports, airports, underground (inside metro while driving, underground stations)
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New York, Performa, White Box
in the frame of: White Noise III: Pandora’s Sound Box, November 2-22, 2009

On Saturday November 21, 5 p.m. there will be Misplaced Women? performance at White Box and around it. Please join in and take part in performing on the spot.

White Box
329 Broome Street
New York, NY 10002
http://whiteboxny.org

Tanja Ostojic would like to hear from anyone performing this delegated piece: Please post your contributions in the form of images, notes or texts to this blog, or upload your video clips to Misplaced Women? account at Vimeo. For further guidelines please send a mail to: misplacedwomen[at]yahoo.com

Misplaced Women? is a delegated performance in which women volunteers carry packed suitcases in the public spaces repeatedly pausing to pack and unpack as they move about the city.
In this project, Tanja Ostojic enacts an everyday life activity that signifies a displacement as common to transients, migrants, and disaster refugees, as it is to the itinerant artist traveling the world to earn her living. Ostojic’s street performance continues themes of migration, desired mobility, and relations of power and vulnerability in regards to the mobile female body, found in much of her previous work.