February 2005

Notes of meeting - real time/reality by Tanya

VESSEL
Ronélle: bodice, wedding dress
Eugenie: I am holding the space for women in the past and future of my family
Cheryl: dot dot dot, three salad bowls, I am inconclusive because I haven't reproduced, so planted grass in the bowls to propagate
Annie: Time, we think of breaking the bowls is one moment, and the process of creating and breaking can go on forever, 3000 year old baobab tree
Sanna: Collaborativity, where to fit into women-oriented world, I lives in a male world
Eugenie: All the women in my world, I is an ansister to them

BREAKING
Erica: With my Hillbrow women, in a church, we had made bowls, desire to finish it off, make it beautiful, creativity is a continuum, one of their projects was a hat that became a bowl
Eugenie: Taking your hat (head) and making it into a bowl (impressed with notion)
Erica: Some of the women actually saw ancestors during the process, to rejuvenate, cathartic, chose Country Life to make papier mache bowls
Kay: Energy of women is to create, not break, destructivity alien
Anneline: Breaks crockery to release frustration, when daughter left home I had to become alpha-female again, petroglyphs, want to hand over bowl to daughter
Eugenie: Passing on a symbol, she becomes the next ansister, you were the ansister
Kay: Giving the bowl away is a metaphorical destruction
Annie: Breaking was moving, I picked up my own pieces, burning reminded me of Salem Witch Hunts
Kay: Artmaking as ritual process
Eugenie: Right at the end pulling everyone's bits together might make a good ritual
Annie: Ancestors are geographically bound. Ansisters will be put up in a prison, ansisters will have a thread attaching it to a geographical location
Eugenie: anti-outcomes-based-process, stimulates others in group, kept grandmothers jewellery in a broken box (vessel), it was stolen
Pauline: Katty making a conceptual bowl
Mariette: upside down hiding place is a vessel
Annie: Breaking the vessel leaves a space to be filled, leaves room
Cheryl: Artists want to communicate the effects in a very permanent form - static - compared to performance - dynamic

BACKGROUND
FACE: Networking, sharing energy so that concepts are given body, female empowerment, ubuntu, relationships, co-creation, democracy as consensus building
Practically: ansisters; workshop; activation of empowerment in line with female values; men are included if (stresses this point) they can explore female values for future development
Networking with others that are working towards female empowerment

HLUMELO
How to activate theatre back into the healing tool it used to be;
: Training people (psychologists, social workers, etc.) in theatre;
: Workshops: taking them through the process
: Constellation: visual art is the container; into it music, ritual not just passive exhibition process, confession, break the silence, choice of participation level in the experience, choice being created

TO DO:
14 May: Eugenie will be here to workshop with participants

FUNDING
Eugenie: For workshops, website, invitation, marketing
: The exhibition will be a way of aksing for more funding
: The girls are the network too, share resources
Nolene: Setting up bartering group, Eugenie helping
: Get more other-colour girls

TO DO:
: Make database of possible linkages pull them in and trade
: Consider categories, e.g. Media
: Sanna has info on curators
: Anneline will bring info on the Dutch lineage exhibition
: Calendar on website - timeline
: Pricing and merchandising - agents to actively sell the work
: Satellite venues, safe spaces for reactions to the ansister art

CONCEPTS
Anni: What is in the past , the silenced, NB focus on future simultaneously
Cheryl: Resquing ailing trees, willows sprout from a dead tree, alien invaders, hlumelo means shoot of a dead tree - synchronicity
Annie: Mitochondrial DNA person
Anneline: Velvet, pearls dress that looks like uterus

WEBSITE
: Communicating
: Emails with people outside Gauteng
: Online porocess space, parallel to physical
: Marketing - Vega/Wits Multimedia/Multimediia departments/libraries could devote a room to exploring online exhibition of ansisters for that week (tanya)
: Blogging
: Katty will advise how to make the process digital list of resources experiment with privacy

BOOK
: In five years time, Tanya researcher

Posted 31 March 2005, Ansister site, author: Tanya Pretorius