Photo: Gex Caroline.

Starting from some text scores and protocols by Pauline Oliveros, the Blank Noise collective, and myself, this collective walk aims to be a platform to reflect together on gendered (listening) experiences in public space and to unlearn some of the behaviors assumed as appropriate, safe or expected when we walk. Considering urban planning and the social organization of space and time as systems that coproduce power relations, including patriarchal ones, the walk aims to question these asymmetries, share experiences, and imagine together practices of attention, care, resonance, solidarity, re-appropriation or overturning that might feed other ways of occupying space. Feminist Steps is an invitation to listen to our feelings and our relation to urban otherness, but also to invest and reclaim public space through the vibration of our bodies, our presence, our steps, our voice, our words, our screams.

The Feminist Steps workshop will be intertwined with the Sono-Soro workshop, which will be the background to a soundwalk by Amanda Gutiérrez by the same title. Women and LGTBQ+2 communities are invited to share their nighttime personal experiences strolling around Ljubljana. Through collective embodiment, Sono-soro [walks] will involve a listening and sound recording session based on a walking score.

We will reflect upon positionality, intersectionality, and collaborative care.

Amanda Gutiérrez research is centred on creating walking methodologies as socially engaged projects that reflect and collectively strategize the individual rights and agency in the public space, especially for marginalized groups, women and LTGBQ+2 individuals.

Elena Biserna is an independent researcher and curator based in Marseille, France. She writes, talks, teaches, facilitates workshops or collective projects, curates and sometimes performs. Her interests gravitate to listening and “situated” art practices related to urban dynamics, socio-cultural processes, and the public and political sphere.

Amanda Gutiérrez (b. 1978, Mexico City) explores the experience of political listening and gender studies by bringing into focus soundwalking practices. Trained and graduated initially as a stage designer from The National School of Theater, Gutiérrez uses a range of digital media tools to investigate everyday life aural agencies and collective identities. Approaching these questions from aural perspectives continues to be of particular interest to Gutiérrez, who completed her MFA in Media and Performance Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

The work is co-produced by the City of Women Festival, with the financial support of the Concordia University and the financial assistance of the European Union. The views expressed in the work can in no way be taken to reflect the official opinion of the European Union.

Co-funded by: Goethe-Institut within the Culture Moves Europe programme.