Feminist Groupwork: On feminist collectivity as social and psychic community

这个项目考察了伦敦的妇女艺术图书馆，它是一个关键的女权主义合作艺术组织，受到女权主义政治和20世纪70年代和80年代妇女解放运动(WLM)组织原则的影响。这项研究将把这个组织嵌入到这一时期艺术家发展的女权主义合作艺术实践的更广泛的景观中，其中许多都被记录在图书馆的档案中。该项目在妇女艺术图书馆进行初步研究，并收集自20世纪70年代以来数十年来参与其形成和发展的参与者的口述历史，该项目将通过妇女艺术图书馆的历史和研究绘制联合王国妇女合作艺术实践的地图。这项研究将利用WLM中关于组织的著作和关于群体的精神分析理论来开发一个通过小组工作和合作建立的心理社区的理论模型。最终，这个项目将把女性艺术图书馆作为一个精神上的女权主义空间，并为英国的合作女权主义艺术组织贡献一个以前不成文的叙述。这个项目的主要目的是研究和理论性女性艺术图书馆的历史，理解它的起源，来自WLM的横向组织结构。该项目将把女性的社会关系和心理关系纳入其历史，这是世界妇女运动的一个重要方面，比如有这样一句话：姐妹情谊很强大，让人们将女性理解为同龄人而不是竞争对手的横向网络。该项目将使用期刊、时事通讯和同时代文本等主要材料来了解组织问题，并建立围绕女权主义圈子中的艺术创作的进一步网络和话语。该项目将动员妇女艺术图书馆的档案馆撰写一部关注合作和团体实践的女权主义艺术史，并在这样做的过程中，对材料创建一种批判性和方法论的方法，既突出其重要性，又突出其政治工作的前景。使用档案馆的原始材料，如独特的会议和研讨会笔记、星历和展览文件，并收集英国女权主义艺术运动人物的口述历史，这项研究的次要目的是绘制英国女性合作艺术实践的地图。该项目将艺术合作定义为从政治工作中收集到的一种关键的女权主义方法，将叙述世界妇女运动的组织结构之间的联系，如小组进程、提高意识和小组工作，以及与之同时进行的艺术生产方法(Hanish：1970，Sarachild：1975)。这将使该项目能够清楚地表达对英国女权主义艺术的理解，从个人历史中分散出来，强调合作既是其创作的基础，也是其创作的动力。理论上，该项目将关注从女权主义团体工作中收集到的女权主义合作艺术实践的两个方面：向非等级结构的驱动，以及姐妹关系作为一种理想化的精神和社会社区模式。通过考虑作品中的这些主题，以及由了解女权主义的艺术家组织起来，包括他们对创作过程的询问，这个项目将引出20世纪70年代和80年代艺术家群体工作的政治赌注。此外，思考朱丽叶·米切尔在精神分析和女权主义方面的工作，对于理解由WLM推动的从单方面的家庭结构到社会和精神社区的转变将是至关重要的。这些来源将发展出一个精神社区的方法论模型：合作者之间共享的能量和心理联系，这既构成了支持网络，也构成了共享的身体政治。

This project examines the Women's Art Library in London as a key feminist collaborative art organisation that was influenced by feminist politics and the organising principles of the Women's Liberation Movement (WLM) in the 1970s and 80s. This research will embed this organisation within the broader landscape of feminist collaborative art practices developed by artists from this period, many of which are documented in the library's archive. Undertaking primary research in the Women's Art Library, and gathering oral histories from participants in its formation and development across the decades since the 1970s, this project will map women's collaborative art practices in the United Kingdom through a history of, and research within, the Women's Art Library. This research will utilise writings on organising from the WLM and psychoanalytic theory on groups to develop a theoretical model of the psychic community built by group work and collaboration. Ultimately, this project will frame the Women's Art Library as a psychical feminist space and contribute a previously unwritten narrative of collaborative feminist arts organisation in the United Kingdom.This project's primary aim is to research and theorise the history of the Women's Art Library, understanding its origins as drawn from the lateral organisational structures of the WLM. The project will incorporate the social and psychic relations of women into its history, an important dimension of the WLM illustrated by phrases such as 'sisterhood is powerful,' creating an understanding of women as a lateral network of peers instead of competitors. The project will use primary materials such as journals, newsletters and contemporaneous texts to understand issues of organising, as well as establishing further networks and discourses that surrounded art making in feminist circles. This project will mobilise the Women's Art Library's archive to write a feminist art history that is attentive to collaboration and group practices, and in doing so, create a critical and methodological approach to the material that both highlights its significance and foregrounds its political work.Using primary materials from the archive, such as the unique collection of meeting and workshop notes, ephemera and exhibition documentation, and gathering oral histories from figures in the British feminist art movement, the secondary aim of this research is to map women's collaborative artistic practice in the UK. Defining artistic collaboration as a key feminist method gleaned from political work, the project will narrate ties between organising structures of the WLM, such as the small group process, consciousness-raising and group work, and methods of art production contemporaneous to it (Hanish: 1970, Sarachild: 1975). This will enable the project to articulate an understanding of British feminist art decentralised from individual histories, highlighting collaboration as both a foundation and impetus for its production.Theoretically, this project will focus on two aspects of feminist collaborative artistic practice that are gleaned from feminist group work: the drive towards non-hierarchical structures, and sisterhood as an idealised mode of psychic and social community. In considering these thematics in the work and organising by artists informed by feminism, including their interrogation of the creative process, this project will draw out the political stakes of artists' group work in the 1970s and 80s. In addition, thinking with Juliet Mitchell's work on psychoanalysis and feminism will be crucial to understanding transitions from unilateral familial structures to the social and psychic communities propelled by the WLM.These sources will develop a methodological model of a psychic community: a shared energy and psychical connection between collaborators that both constitutes a support network and shared body politic.