Dreams for Women to return January 11th…

Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning. – Gloria Steinem

With 2008 coming to a close, I wanted to say a little something to mark the first anniversary of the Dreams for Women project. We started posting Dreams for Women postcards on our blog in January 2008 and it has been an incredible first year!

I never would have known that in that time, we would receive postcards from places as diverse as Brazil, Portugal, Germany, Romania, Japan, or Spain. I never would have known how much the postcards that I received would touch me and move me and make me think. I didn’t know then that I would be moved to tears when I received postcards from an eating disorder clinic, or that I would share postcard making with my beautiful and intelligent younger sister.

And I never would have known then that I would take the Dreams for Women postcard art project to the New York United Nations office, or to the University of Southern Connecticut. I especially didn’t know that we would be mentioned in Ms. Magazine, and on Feministing, and showcased in the International Museum of Women. Or that the Dreams for Women calendar would take off as it did. Or that I would meet and speak to and hear from so many people who supported our work and were inspired by what we were doing.

Life is full of surprises and this year has been a surprise for me. It has been exciting and fun and enriching and I want to thank you for that. The readers, the artists, the purchasers of calendars have given me so much this year. You have inspired me and sustained me in my work and my feminism. Thank you so much. Happy first anniversary Dreams for Women! May there be many more!

Dreams for Women will be back on January 11th, when I am back in Vancouver and have time to upload some of the great postcards I have recently received!

Dreams for Women – Millennium Scholars 2.0

A couple of weeks ago, I did a presentation about our Dreams for Women project for the Millennium Foundation’s Western Blowout meeting. The meeting brought together Millennium Scholars from across Western Canada.  The scholars who took part in my workshop made postcards and I’m posting them today. I would like to thank all the amazing people who I met and who participated in the Dreams for Women project.

I would also like to remind everyone to pick up their Dreams for Women 2009 calendar! Check it out here! Buy one for yourself, buy a bunch for your friends as gifts or buy copies to sell as a fundraiser for your non-profit organization!

Antigone Magazine is facilitating a Feminist Postcard art project! We want to know what your Dreams for Women are.What are your own dreams for yourself, your friends, your sisters, your daughters? Paint, draw, write, sketch or decoupage your dreams on a postcard and send it to the address below:

Antigone Magazine

C/O WILLA UBc

Box 61-6138 SUB Boulevard

Vancouver, BC, Canada

V6T 1Z1

OR

antigonemagazine(at)hotmail.com

With your postcard submission, we ask that you make a donation (if you can!) to Antigone Magazine for anywhere from $1 to $10. You can send your money along with your postcard or donate on our blog: http://www.antigonemagazine.wordpress.com/ .

But don’t worry… if you don’t have the money, just send along the postcard and tell people about this program.

What is Antigone Magazine? We’re a grassroots national magazine that works to encourage young women to get involved in politics in Canada. We work to empower young women to engage politically and civically and to actively take part in leadership roles.We are raising the money in order to help launch the Antigone Foundation, a national foundation that will encourage young women aged 10-30 to get politically and civically engaged. Help support Antigone as we help to make the dreams of young women come true!

WACK! The After Party

All (gender)Inclusive Weekend Package:
Un-packing the pants of vaginal imagery in feminist art

Dec 11-13, 2008, Vancouver, BC, Canada

VIVO and various locations in Vancouver

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We, THE AFTER PARTY, invite you, (pro)feminist collaborator, to contribute to our response to WACK! during our All (gender)Inclusive Weekend Package: Un-packing the pants of vaginal imagery in feminist art Dec 11-13, 2008.

This series of happenings will take place at venues in Vancouver and will take shape through your participation – but you don’t have to live in Vancouver to take part! Read on, sisters!

In the spirit of Feminism, THE AFTER PARTY will host an All (gender) Inclusive Weekend Package with a series of events in Vancouver: A Thursday night group walk-through of the WACK! exhibition at the VAG, followed by a day-long hands-oncardboard craft workshop and two temporary installations at VIVO’s Friday night Riot Grrl event, a Saturday brunch, and finally, a Sunday bonfire at Wreck Beach.

All (gender)Inclusive Weekend Package will have the feel of something between a debauch Feminist clubhouse, Santa’s workshop, and a DIY cardboard utopia. Together we will create two installations with artist multiples and hand-crafted cardboard objects at VIVO for one-night only December 12, 2008! This work will respond both to WACK! and to Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party (1974-1979) which featured place settings honoring women icons and aimed to “end the ongoing cycle of omission in which women were written out of the historical record.” Objects will be suspended like mobiles from VIVO’s ceiling or will join an assemblage of limited edition multiples on a table to stage a wild “after-party” scene a.k.a THE AFTER (dinner) PARTY installation.

Cut-up some cardboard, cut out the patriarchy, and let’s make this happen together!

ITINERARY:

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December 11

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GROUP ART WALK: WADE IN WACK!‘s VADGE AT VAG

Location: Vancouver Art Gallery, 750 Hornby Street

Time: 6-9pm. FREE. RSVP

Join in a group walk-through of WACK!, immerse yourself in the exhibition space and encounter the seminal works first hand.

Admission covered, 20 peeps max – PLEASE RSVP aine_hoganfinlay@yahoo.com or samsemper@yahoo.com

www.vanartgallery.bc.ca/the_exhibitions/exhibit_wack.html

December 12

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FEMINIST ROUGH CRAFT CARDBOARD SCULPTING 101

Location: VIVO (Video In), 1965 Main Street

Time: 10- 6pm. Drop-in, or stay the day. FREE.

Create your own cardboard interpretations and reincar(dboard)nations of an

art work from the WACK! exhibition and The Dinner Party. Make a place setting for your fave feminist! Make a replica, make a miniature, make it big or make it up! Let you imagination and your x-acto run wild on the cardboard. (Cardboard provided, B.Y.O.X-acto)

www.videoinstudios.com/phrancthecardboardcobbler.blogspot.com/

THIS SUMMER’S GONNA BE A GIRL RIOT DANCE PARTY

Location: VIVO (Video In Studios), 1965 Main Street

Time: 9:30pm- late. $5.

Music videos and documentation from the Riot Grrrl Movement | Performances by: the Bash Brothers, Oh I See & Her Jazz Noise Collective | Mix Tape Marathon with DJ Ruggedly Handsome, DJ Tapes & DJ Doll Parts | THE AFTER PARTY INSTALLATION

December 13

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MORNING AFTER BRUNCH:
…MUDFLAP-JACKS, EGGS’ N BACON STRIPS

Location: Hexon House. 795 E. Pender @ Hawks

Time: 12pm- 3pm. RSVP

Come eat some food and drop your drawers!  Make a blind contour drawing of you privates (with Sharpie or ink) on a cardboard hand-mirror, in a relaxed group setting and reflect on sexual health issues while you bare witness and examine your own body…. (hand-mirrors provided, yours to keep!)

PLEASE RSVP: aine_hoganfinlay@yahoo.com

December 14

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WACK! WRECK! BEACH BURNING-WOMAN BONFIRE

Location: Wreck Beach

Time: after 3pm –

Make the trek to Wreck beach at sundown with your cardboard art for a flame’n phoenix bond-fire and fem-effigy burning in the safe sand. B.Y.O.B. and B.Y.O.C-board art. Safety first!
(depart from city at 2pm sharp: Broadway & Commercial B-Line Stop)
http://www.wreckbeach.org/

LONG DISTANCE RELATIONSHIP:

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Participate from afar! Mail in your art and we’ll show it off at the All (gender) Inclusive Weekend Package at VIVO before we torch it. This is your chance to be heard, silence is violence!  All mailed work must be received in Vancouver by December 8, 2008.

Note: Objects may be suspended from the ceiling like a mobile, so please consider the weight of your object when crafting, and treat all sides. Please anticipate the X-mas postal rush or Canada Post strike and mail early!

Here’s how to participate:

1. Work from memory or look-up images of the WACK! collection online (see links below), reinterpret any art work from the show in cardboard, and send to the address below.
2. Send us a hand-made item to add to the place-setting for the THE AFTER (dinner) PARTY installation inspired by aremarkable woman! (e.i. portrait plate, cup, place-mat, or artist multiple in cardboard or any media that can be mailed, max dimensions 13″ x 13″ space and possibly flowing off table to ground).
3. Send us your vagina (and/or body)-inspired artist multiples to include in the installation (cardboard or any media).
   

Mail (work that does not have to be signed-for) to:
THE AFTER PARTY
c/o VIVO
1965 Main Street
Vancouver, BC
V5T 3C1

Looking forward to working with you,
MAJORA love to all….

THE AFTER PARTY
(Paige Gratland, Onya Hogan-Finlay and Hannah Jickling)

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THE AFTER PARTY is a mobile and flexible collection of artist multiples, group activities and collective performances responding to the loaded visuality surrounding feminist consciousness and the body in contemporary art practices hosted by Paige Gratland, Onya Hogan-Finlay and Hannah Jickling.

This project will be supported by UBC Gender Performance Project and it’s satellite programming with the WACK! exhibition at the VAG.

Free Holiday Party – BC Young Liberals!

From Chris Sandve, President – BC Young Liberals:

Every year, the BC Young Liberals host a free Holiday Party for all BCYL members and their friends. This year we have booked a private room at Maxines Hideaway for the holiday event!

Maxines is a new restaurant and club for dining, lounging and dancing, which is reminiscent of intimate clubs in Paris or New York.

Maxines and also has a great menu and we will be serving complimentary appetizers at the start of the event. As well, around 10 or 10:30, our room will be opened up to the public and we will have a live DJ and dancing.

The Holiday Party will be held on Friday December 19, starting at 8:00 PM at Maxines Hideaway on 1215 Bidwell Street in Vancouver.

Please invite your friends to attend, this event is a great way to meet others involved in the BCYL and get involved with politics in a fun, social setting
RSVP to Chris at chris.sandve@bcliberals.com

Thank You!

I just wanted to write a post to let you all know just how much I have been touched this last week by your response to our call to buy calendars! We’ve sold over 150 calendars in the last week! That is absolutely amazing and very much appreciated by all of us at Antigone Magazine. We just want to thank you and tell you all how much you totally rock!

You are helping us make our dreams come true by making it possible to launch Antigone for Girls, a magazine for girls aged 10-15 that will encourage them to get involved in leadership, politics and activism. That’s pretty darn cool of you!

While we still have a long way to go before Antigone for Girls is a sustainable reality (and 350 more calendars to sell!), I just wanted to say how important and touching your support has been. After being overwhelmed by our attempts to grow as an organization, your incredible support has made us believe again in the power of dreams and the potential that they can someday become a reality. So, please keep dreaming and keep sending us your dreams. If we continue to share these dreams with each other, I know that a great deal can be done to make this world a better place for women and girls.

If you haven’t bought a calendar yet, please consider buying one. You can do so here. If you have already bought one – tell others about our project and calendars. And if you can’t afford to buy a calendar, tell others about the project and send us a postcard with your dream on it!

Thank you again. With love!

– AR

Flesh Mapping

I had the extreme pleasure this week of speaking to some wonderful feminist activists from as far away as India and the Phillipines.  As part of Vancouver’s Rape Relief’s Flesh Mapping project, they have brought activists from across the Pacific Rim to Vancouver to discuss the prostitution and trafficking of women.  Their project is being put on in conjunction with the WACK! show at the Vancouver Art Gallery and they have a very interesting display at Gallery Gache, where they are showing bedsheets designed by women seeking an end to prostitution. The show is fascinating and engaging (definitely likely to provoke some interesting debates and conversations!) and the women that they have in town are delightful, accomplished and dedicated.

I hope you will all have an opportunity to stop by their exhibit or the Vancouver Art Gallery while their activists are there. The details are below!

Gallery Gachet
Live Media Installation
Nov 25 – Dec 10th 2008
12-5pm

View the Gallery Gachet program, The Catalogue of Bedsheets.

In a new genre public art praxis, guided by four local artists: Haruko Okano, Bettina Matzkuhn, Suzanne Rutchinski and Krista Tupper and collective members from Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter. Hosted by the collective at Gallery Gachet Sixty women will exhibit their view of Vancouver particulars about prostitution.

To view live streaming video of the Gallery Gachet click here. The video will be available between November 25th to December 10th from 2 to 4 pm.

The Vancouver Art Gallery
An Artful Conversation between Pacific Rim women
Nov 25-Dec 10 2008
2pm-4pm

View the Vancouver Art Gallery program for Flesh Mapping: a Feminist Conversation.

Hosted by Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter, 15 feminists organizers from around the Pacific Rim will gather daily for two hours in artful discussion of the conditions of women, the marketing of women, the nature of pacific trade and the connections between prostitution in Vancouver and international trafficking in girls and women. This Pacific Rim information will be linked by two-way live feed to the Vancouver installation at Gallery Gachet displayed on screens at both sites.

To view live streaming video of the Vancouver Art Gallery event click here. The video will be available between November 25th to December 10th from 2 to 4 pm.

Dreams for Women: Blogger Giveaways

We REALLY need your help! With only one month left of 2008, we still have 500 copies of our 2009 Dreams for Women Calendars left to sell! The money raised by selling these calendars is instrumental for us to launch Antigone For Girls (a magazine written by and for girls aged 10-15 that will encourage them to get involved in leadership and politics).

So… We’re giving FREE calendars to the first 15 bloggers who write about the calendars and pay a $5 shipping fee at this link:

For those of you who aren’t familiar with our Dreams for Women community art project, I will provide you with some background. The project began in January 2008 and has since been featured in Ms. Magazine and in the International Museum of Women, garnering worldwide media attention and submissions from as far away as Japan, Germany, Brazil, France, and Romania. The Dreams for Women art project asks women and men of all ages to tell us what their dreams are for women by painting, drawing, writing, sketching or decoupaging them onto a postcard. Postcards are posted every second Saturday on the Antigone Magazine blog.

To buy a calendar go here!

*This offer only applies to blog posts posted after December 1rst.

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girl effect CARE humanitarian organization

The Girl Effect, n.
The powerful social and economic change brought about when girls have the opportunity to participate in their society.

The Girl Effect is about Girls. And boys. And moms and dads and villages and towns and countries. It’s run through CARE, a leading humanitarian organization fighting global poverty who place special focus on working alongside poor women because, equipped with the proper resources, women have the power to help whole families and entire communities escape poverty. Women are at the heart of CARE’s community-based efforts to improve basic education, prevent the spread of HIV, increase access to clean water and sanitation, expand economic opportunity and protect natural resources. CARE also delivers emergency aid to survivors of war and natural disasters, and helps people rebuild their lives.