HYBRID WOMEN is a feminist, fierce and feeling collective bridging Italy and the UK.
Dr Alice Bell, Senior Lecturer Fine Art, Deputy Head of School of Creative Arts, University of Lincoln
Dr Gaia Del Negro, Independent Researcher, University of Milano Bicocca
Dr Silvia Luraschi, Independent Researcher, University of Milano Bicocca & Lecturer in Pedagogy at the University of Bergamo
Ms Marina Sossi, Independent Artist, London
We work with adults in education, enabling deep transformational encounter through multimodal arts practices; spiritual, somatic, and playful. We inhabit relational spaces wherein processes of unlearning, becoming and emancipation occur co-affectively.
We work mainly online to overcome our geographical distance.
In 2023 we met in Croatia to participate in the Artfulness conference, 23-24 September, with a workshop "Building a Boat for Tempestuous Times" and a video presentation "Stories of Sirens not Semen: Hybrid Women with Bodies of Birds, Heads of Humans and Souls of Love".
During the workshop (which was meant to be at the seaside and then was turned online due to conference logistic issues), we shared our practice, bringing awareness to precarious situations and beliefs. By honouring the traumatic, we transmuted this art-fully and care-fully into something more powerful, beautiful, owned: "our rebelliousness challenges that which is no longer ‘of service’, resourcing ourselves and our collaborators with richer pedagogies for life".
Our video presentation won the Artfuless Croatia 2023 conference prize for The Bravest and the Most Rebellious Presentation.
You can read more below (open access):
- Bell, A., Del Negro, G., Luraschi, S., Sossi, M. (2024) ‘Building a boat for tempestuous times / Stories of sirens not semen: Hybrid Women with bodies of birds, heads of humans and souls of love’. In M. Cestarić & A. Balić (eds) Arfulness Journal of Visual Essays 2024, Zbornik Radova S Konferencije ARTFULNESS CROATIA 2023 (pp. 8-15). Učiteljski fakultet Sveučilišta u Zagrebu. ISBN PDF Open Access: 978-953-380-017-2 https://webshop.ufzg.hr/proizvod/zbornik-radova-s-konferencije-artfulness-croatia-2023/
- Bell, A., Del Negro, G., Luraschi, S. & Sossi, M. (2024) ‘Hybrid Women’. In D. Clover, S.A. Brown, N. Kazmi, K. Sanford & Y. Zhao (curators) VISIBILITY / INVISIBILITY. Gendered (re)orderings. Online Feminist exhibition, University of Victoria, Canada [Exhibition catalogue]. Open Access: https://onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca/comarts/academic-publications/aesthetic-publications-and-creations/exhibitions/visibility-invisibility-gendered-reorderings/
We produced a second video with material filmed during our meeting in Croatia that was selected for the Out of Site on the Streets: Live Arts Festival, September 28th-29th 2023, within the FLOW International Performance Art Symposium. It was shown live in Chicago and Rotterdam, and live streamed online on 28th September 2023.
The video can be watched on the YouTube channel of the Experimental Sound Studio.
---- watch here [minute 1:39:22] https://www.youtube.com/live/gjBwXUf_Bvo?si=OLPgK59EMtZbDN3x&t=5963
Photo: Alice Bell, Out of Site on the Streets: Live Arts Festival, September 28th-29th 2023, live streaming of Hybrid Women, 28th September 2023.