Feminist futures – Towards antiracist and intersectional stages

Feminist Futures empowers and raises visibility to the works of Cameroonian-Finnish dance artist Sonya Lindfors and Somalian-Finnish artist Maryan Abdulkarim. Eight European organisations of varying sizes make up the collaboration seeking to turn their Perform Europe partnership into an alternative performance network across Europe. They include – Sonya Lindfors – UTT ry (Finland), Rosendal International Theatre (Norway), RE:LOCATIONS – Digital festival by WILDTOPIA ApS (Denmark), CODA Oslo International Dance Festival (Norway), Oyoun Kultur NeuDenken gUG (Germany), LIFT Festival (UK), Independent Dance (UK), and H2DANCE/Fest en Fest (UK).

Feminist Futures reflects a diverse, BIPOC, women-centered partnership innovating practices for the future. Their long-term strategic aim is to platform and promote together queer, feminist, decolonial, migrant and human-centered artist-led initiatives across Europe.

Both artists focus on questions around Blackness and Black body politics, feminism, representation and power structures, speculative futurities and decolonial dreaming practices.

Feminist Futures also reimagines the link between solidarity and fair collaboration models directly linking the well-being of the artist to a slower, sustainable model, providing space and time to connect to local artists and audiences. By doing so, the artistic work becomes deeply embedded in the local community.

With the live locations being 1000km from the artist’s base in Helsinki, ecological concerns have also been taken into account and mitigated through carbon offsetting, reducing team sizes to a minimum, and reusing and recycling wherever possible.

Besides the live presentations, the partnership is innovating how they reach audiences that have limited access to live arts (money, location, backgrounds and experiences, accessibility of arts spaces) by using the digital works of the artist in their digital presentations.

Collaboration beyond Perform Europe is already in the works planned for Autumn 2022.