Feda, PhD Research in Fine Art Practice, Politicised Aesthetics, Critical Pedagogy, Subjectivity, Sue Wilks

While completing my book proposal project (see Academic Appeal) I had carried on researching, working and attending university. I remained focused upon presenting my work in an experimental context so that I could gain from critical feedback and my need continued to be to find events where I might be able to do this. For some time I had been interested in the work of the artists'; Martha Rosler, Mary Kelly and Lorraine Leeson, all of who had collaborated in some manner with trade union movements in the 1970s, and I was curious to see if contemporary political environments could accomodate those working with political concerns through the means of art practice. The two accounts below, 'Berlin' and 'Geneva', each detail my experiences of contributing towards political meetings in these locations. However, in these particular environments I found it a struggle to pursue my intention to participate as a politically motivated artist, feeling instead that it was preferred that I should occupy the role of a sister-comrade; a woman who delivers a straight political paper designed to challenge specific political legislation, rather than as an artist presenting experimentally performative papers, requesting personal responses to political concerns. The value of the former role is not to be undermined, I only mention this to clarify the ways in which shared concerns are constituted of multiple differences.