About

The Feminist Duration Reading Group (FDRG) focuses on under-represented feminist texts, movements and struggles from outside the Anglo-American canon. The group has developed a practice of reading out loud, together, one paragraph at a time, with the aim of creating a sense of connection and intimacy during meetings.

The group was established in March 2015 by Helena Reckitt, at Goldsmiths, University of London, to explore texts from the Italian feminist movement of the 1970s and 1980s. Later in 2015 it relocated to SPACE in Hackney, East London where it was hosted by Persilia Caton until April 2019. From June 2019 to February 2020 the group was in residence at the South London Gallery, where it focused on intersectional feminisms in the UK context (a planned year-long programme that was moved online due to COVID-19).

In 2023 we were one of several groups selected for the eighteen month Residents programme at Goldsmiths CCA, London.

From 2023-2024 FDRG partnered with Cell Project Space developing CEED (Central East European and Diaspora) Feminisms, funded by the British Art Network, with Cell Project Space.

FDRG sessions have been organised with Emilia-Amalia at Art Metropole in Toronto; Kunstverein Harburger Bahnhof and HFBK Hamburg, Germany; in London with the Advocacy Academy, Artangel, Barbican Art Gallery, Cell Project Space, Chelsea Space, Chisenhale Gallery, the Drawing Room, Flat Time House, Goldsmiths CCA, Mimosa House, Mosaic Rooms, The Showroom, South Kiosk, Studio Voltaire, Tate Modern, in collaboration with AntiUniversity and the Department of Feminist Conversations, and as part of The Table at the Swiss Church. Elsewhere in the UK we have been hosted by Grand Union and Eastside Projects, Birmingham, esea, Manchester, De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea, and Hypatia Trust, Penzance.  A sister group, NW FDRG, was set up in Liverpool by Kezia Davies in 2019.        

Six members of the FDRG - Giulia Casalini, Diana Georgiou, Laura Guy, Helena Reckitt, Irene Revell, and Amy Tobin - organised the two-week long events programme, ‘Now Can Go,’ focused on legacies of Italian feminism, across the ICA, The Showroom, SPACE, and Raven Row, in December 2015.  

The group usually meets once a month, in art spaces and community venues as well as non-institutional venues such as private homes or gardens.

The FDRG aims to create an inclusive trans-positive space. We welcome feminists of all genders and generations to explore the legacy and resonance of art, thinking and collective practice from earlier periods of feminism, in dialogue with contemporary practices and movements.

Working Group

FDRG sessions are initiated by a Working Group. Current members are Beth Bramich, Sabrina Fuller, Taey Iohe, Helena Reckitt, and Dot Zhihan.

Support Group

FDRG activities are supported by a Support Group comprising former Working Group members Lina Džuverović, Mariana Lemos, Katrin Lock, and Ehryn Torrell.

Other former Working Group members are Giulia Antonioli, Angelica Bollettinari, Lily Evans-Hill, Félicie Kertudo, Ceren Özpinar, Sara Paiola, Justin Seng, and Fiona Townend.

Working with the FDRG: A Note for Institutions

The FDRG is run by members of the voluntary Working and Support Groups. We regularly partner with community and arts organizations to offer free events to the public.

The reading group is our collective practice that we enjoy and like sharing with others. Facilitating sessions does of course involve considerable time and effort. We also have running costs for web hosting and communication, invited speaker fees etc.

We understand financial constraints within the cultural sector, but appreciate any contributions that support our efforts.

The FDRG operates an ‘Honesty Box,’ and asks funded organisations to pay what they can.

For organisations who can access funding, we suggest a fee of £300 - £600 per session, depending on the scope of work entailed.  This roughly follows the a-n artist payment guidelines for 1-1.5 days for an artist with seven years professional experience (the FDRG was set up in 2015).

Collaborators and Partners

FDRG sessions have been led by Adomas Narkevicius, Ximena Alarcón-Díaz, Giulia Antonioli, Diana Baker Smith, Fari Bradley, Beth Bramich, Giulia Casalini, Laura Castagnini, Catherine Cho, Leah Clements, Morgane Conti, Lauren Craig, Cinzia Cremona, Galit Criden, Giulia Damiani, Oana Damir, Kezia Davies, Department of Feminist Conversations, Flora Dunster, Lina Džuverović, Lily Evans-Hall, Lucia Farinati, Lynne Friedli, Sabrina Fuller, Diana Georgiou, Rose Gibbs, Valeria Graziano, Laura Guy, Haley Ha, Nora Heidorn, Minna Henriksson, Jacqueline Hoàng Nguyễn, Yurika Imaseki, Taey Iohe, Félicie Kertudo, Alexandra Kokoli, Jessie Krish, Mariana Lemos, Mai Ling, Jet Moon, Gabby Moser, Roisin O’Sullivan, Ceren Özpinar, Frances Painter Fleming, Grace Eunhye Park, Sara Paiola, Raju Rage, Helena Reckitt, Irene Revell, Lidia Salvatori, Elif Sarican, Justin Seng, Something Other, Cecilia Sosa, Amy Tobin, Ehryn Torrell, and Dot Zhihan.

Artists, Writers & Collectives

Sessions have been dedicated to texts and artworks including those by Naadje Al-Aali, Joan Anim-Addo, Floya Anthias and Nira Yuval-Davis, Gloria Anzaldua, Jenn Ashworth, Margot Badran, Khairani Barokka, Chiai Bonfiglioli, Anne Boyer, Brixton Black Women’s Group, adrienne maree brown, Wilmette Brown, Octavia Butler, Sakine Cansiz, Hazel V Carby, Adriana Cavarero, Teresa Hak Kyung Cha, Anne Anlin Cheng, Catherine Cho, Barbara Christian, Lia Cigarini, Eli Clare, Leah Clements, Lauren Craig, Galit Criden, Mariarosa Dalla Costa and Selma James, Maria Puig De La Bellacasa, Leah Clements, Silvia Federici, Leta Hong Fincher, Shulamith Firestone, Lauren Fournier, Ruth Frankenberg, Olivia Guaraldo, Johanna Hedva, bell hooks, Sanja Iveković, Juliet Jacques, Marie Elizabeth Johnson, Jane Jin Kaisen, Jasleen Kaur, AE Kings, Larissa Lai, Teresa de Lauretis, Clarice Lispector, Carla Lonzi, Fereil Ben Mahoud, Alex Martinis Roe, Lea Melandri, Fatema Mernissi, Milan Women’s Bookshop Collective, Trinh T Minh-ha, Adriana Monti, Jet Moon, Antonella Nappi, Astrida Neimanis, Jacqueline Hoàng Nguyen, Abdullah Ocalan, Lola Olufemi, Sue O’Sullivan, Tanja Ostojić, Cecilia Palmeiro, Queer Beograd, Darija Radaković, Raju Rage, Claudia Rankine, Tabita Rezaire, Rivolta Femminile, Lucia Egana Rojas, Sasha Roseneil, Gail Rubin, Suzanne Santoro, Selma Selman, Christina Sharpe, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Rhea Storr, Latif Tas, Miriam Ticktin, Tiqqun, Iris Uurto, Nafu Wang, Kyla Wazana Tompkins, Katri Vala, Vron Ware, Wages Due Lesbians, Wages for Housework, Linda Zerilli.

Contact us

If you would like to join the reading group mailing list or propose a focus for a session, or invite us to lead a meeting, please contact: feministduration@gmail.com 

Website Design by Angelica Bollettinari

Nora Heidorn & Onyeka Igwe: how to work

Nora Heidorn & Onyeka Igwe: how to work

Feminist Duration
2022

For this meeting of the Feminist Duration Reading Group, curator and researcher Nora Heidorn has invited the artist Onyeka Igwe to lead a session together thinking about questions of how to work (with each other, with other's stories, with images, documents, complex histories, etc.). The reading group meeting will take place in person and is kindly hosted by Mimosa House. 

Reading & Viewing

We will read out loud together from Igwe's article ‘being close to, with or amongst’ (‘Feminist Review,’ 2020) and watch her film Specialised Technique (2018). 

The article elaborates Igwe's working method of "critical proximity": a way of interrogating, getting close to, and manipulating colonial films shot in West Africa that she encountered in British archives. The article and film will serve as a starting point to explore together questions of how to work: the process of developing creative, critical methodologies and feminist approaches to one's projects, practices and concerns.

Link to Article

https://www.dropbox.com/s/19vstrk2hjsluo6/Igwe_Being%20close%20to%2C%20with%20or%20amongst.pdf?dl=0

There is no need to read the article beforehand, as we will read out loud together, one person, one paragraph at a time.

EventBrite Booking

Reserve a place here. Booking will close on hour before the event.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/nora-heidorn-onyeka-igwe-how-to-work-tickets-368161289327

Bios

Nora Heidorn curates exhibitions, public programmes, artist projects, and publishes her writing. Her practice is led by interdisciplinary research investigating sexual reproduction, health, and care through an intersectional lens and using artistic methods. She is undertaking an LAHP-funded PhD at the Royal College of Art, London in collaboration with Birth Rites Collection and she teaches at Central Saint Martins College, London. This year, she curated the exhibition Onyeka Igwe: Dancing with the Archive at Uferstudios in Berlin and the screening Being Horizontal: Vulnerability, Care and Resistance as part of Confabulations: Art History, Art Practice, Critical Medical Humanities and she presented her PhD research in a paper titled Touching Matters of Care: A Visual Approach to the Care and Violence in Dr Marie Stopes’ Birth Control Campaign at the Institute of Cultural Inquiry in Berlin.

Onyeka Igwe is an artist and researcher working between cinema and installation. She is born and is based in London, UK. Working across cinema and installation, Igwe creates non-fiction films that use text, images, and film from historical archives to shift the maps of how we understand the past and the present. Her films unfold like figure eights, led through music, performance, and mesmerizing voice-overs. Using a forensic lens, she draws audiences into individual and shared stories that expand onto a multiplicity of narratives, rather than a singular, reductive history. Igwe was awarded the 2021 Foundwork Artist Prize, 2020 Arts Foundation Futures Award for Experimental Short Film, and is the recipient of the Berwick New Cinema Award in 2019.

Nora and Onyeka recently worked together on Onyeka's first solo exhibition in Germany, Dancing with the Archive at Uferstudios in Berlin (2022).

Feminist Duration
This workshop is part of the Feminist Duration series which explores under-known texts, ideas, and movements associated with earlier periods of feminist activity in the UK. Originally designed as part of a year-long residency at the South London Gallery, and rescheduled online in the wake of the COVID pandemic, the programme juxtaposes earlier moments of feminist with current urgencies and struggles.

By restoring material texture to overlooked political and cultural movements, it seeks to resist versions of the past that reduce feminist struggle to one-dimensional stereotypes. Looking to the past to activate its nascent potential, the programme aims to identify tools that can inspire and enrich further collective action, promoting the intergenerational exchange of knowledge and experience. While honouring earlier feminisms, the series also highlights how collaboration, difference, and dissent have characterised previous feminist movements, and how feminists have both negotiated, and failed to significantly attend to, differences between themselves.

Feminist Duration is generously supported by the CHASE Doctoral Training Partnership.

From the Volcano to the Sea: The Feminist Group Le Nemesiache

From the Volcano to the Sea: The Feminist Group Le Nemesiache
Jamaica Kincaid: My Garden (book):

Jamaica Kincaid: My Garden (book):