Reading Group: The Bad Vibes Club

To Become Two: Propositions for Feminist Collective Practice offers a narrative of artist Alex Martinis Roe’s research into a genealogy of feminist political practices in Europe and Australia from the seventies until today. These practices include those of the Milan Women’s Bookstore co-operative; Psychanalyse et Politique, Paris; Gender Studies (formerly Women’s Studies) at Utrecht University; a network in Sydney including people involved in the Sydney Filmmakers Co-operative, Feminist Film Workers, Working Papers Collective, and the Department of General Philosophy at Sydney University; and Duoda – Women’s Research Centre and Ca la Dona, a women’s documentation centre and encounter space in Barcelona. Drawing from their practices and experiences, Martinis Roe’s research forms a proposal for a transgenerational approach to feminist politics. This is further developed as a practical handbook of twenty new propositions for feminist collective practice, which were formed in collaboration with a network of contributors through experiments with these historical practices.

Alex Martinis Roe is an artist and researcher. She is a former fellow of the Graduate School at the University of the Arts Berlin, and holds a PhD from Monash University, Australia. She is currently completing her project To Become Two: a series of films, workshops, public events and a book, as a social history of the feminist practices which invented the concept of ‘sexual difference’, and collective experiments with this research through the sub-project Our Future Network. This project was co-commissioned as a series of solo exhibitions by If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution (Amsterdam), Casco – Office for Art, Design and Theory (Utrecht), The Showroom (London) and ar/ge kunst (Bolzano).

The Bad Vibes Club is a forum for research into negative states. Founded by Matthew de Kersaint Giraudeau in 2014, The Bad Vibes Club hosted a lecture programme and reading group at Open School East from 2014-2016, has produced one-off events at the Barbican, ICA and CCA Derry, a long term research project, Interruptions, with Field Broadcast in 2016, and is currently in residence at Flat Time House in London where they host a regular reading group and a programme of events. www.badvibesclub.co.uk

Beth Bramich is a writer. She writes reviews, critical texts and essays. She has contributed to Art Monthly, frieze, Apollo Magazine and this is tomorrow. She graduated in 2015 from the Critical Writing in Art & Design MA programme at the Royal College of Art and currently works at Afterall Research Centre, University of the Arts London, as Research Coordinator. With Matthew de Kersaint Giraudeau she has programmed The Bad Vibes Club’s events programme at Flat Time House, including talks, screenings and performances.

Kathryn Siegel is writer and researcher, graduate of the MRes: Moving Image program at Central Saint Martins, and is currently working on a PhD between King’s College and LUX. She has been a part of events at LUX, the BFI, and Close-up Cinema, the Peckham Artists Moving Image Festival, and Flat Time House. Her writing on publication culture at the London Filmmaker’s Co-op is featured in the book Shoot Shoot Shoot, which came out with Visible Press in 2016.