[ recap ]

Last week we looked at the Whole Earth Catalog as Stewart Brand's curatorial (artistic) act, hand-selecting tools, tested claims, vouched for results. Marcel Duchamp's "The Creative Act" argument that the artist is a mediumistic being - the viewer completes the work.

The question both raised: who decides what gets built, and for what purpose?

[ thoughts ]

Today is International Women's Day. Rather than the usual platitudes, I want to talk about who gets remembered and who decides.

Marysia Lewandowska started the Women's Audio Archive in 1984 after leaving Poland. She recorded feminist gatherings, talks, conferences, private conversations from 1983 to 1990. Participants include Judy Chicago, Mary Kelly, Barbara Kruger, Jo Spence, Nancy Spero, Jane Weinstock, and others.

From the archive introduction:
"Having been educated and raised in a totalitarian state and under a Communist regime, the artist maintains a sensitivity to the power of representation, to the original and manipulation of images, thereby influencing her perception of how history is constructed, who keeps the documents, and who has access to public broadcast."

Who keeps the documents. Who has access to public broadcast. These aren't abstract questions when you've lived under a regime that controls both.

The archive exists because Lewandowska decided these conversations needed to survive. No institution commissioned it. No publisher greenlit it. She made the archive because the alternative was erasure.

[ creativity ]

Manifestos work the same way. When you're not represented in the existing record, you create your own.

VNS MATRIX (1991): Four Australian women coined "cyberfeminism" with a seventeen-line manifesto: "we are the modern cunt / positive anti reason / unbounded unleashed unforgiving." Put it on billboards, faxed it, wheatpasted it around cities. The manifesto spread because it was designed to spread.

Riot Grrrl (1991): Punk feminist movement that published zines, organized shows, created their own distribution networks. The Riot Grrrl Manifesto declared: "BECAUSE we are unwilling to assimilate to someone else's (boy) standards of what is or isn't." Made their own media because mainstream media wouldn't.

Guerrilla Girls (1985): Anonymous feminist collective posting facts on wheat-pasted posters: "Do women have to be naked to get into the Met Museum? Less than 5% of the artists in the Modern Art sections are women, but 85% of the nudes are female." Created the data record themselves.

Pussy Riot (2011): Russian feminist punk collective. "Punk Prayer" performed in Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. Arrested, imprisoned, but the documentation spread globally. Created their own visibility in a system designed to silence them.

Xenofeminism (2015): Laboria Cuboniks collective wrote "Xenofeminist Manifesto": "If nature is unjust, change nature!" Argued for using technology to dismantle gender rather than return to some mythical natural state. Posted online, translated, distributed freely.

If the existing systems won't document you, platform you, or represent you accurately, you create your own record.

[ making ]

Two actions this week:

Write a manifesto: Pick your subject. Under 200 words. Declarative. Use "we" or "I" statements. Say what you believe directly. Post it somewhere public - your site, a poster, a zine. Don't explain it, just put it out.

Archive something: Record a conversation. Document a process. Interview someone whose knowledge isn't written down. Photograph a space before it changes.

Who decides what gets preserved? If you're waiting for someone else to decide your work matters enough to document, you're waiting for permission that might never come.

Document it yourself.

[ sign off ]

Who gets remembered isn't an accident. It's a choice made by whoever controls the archive, the gallery, the platform, the narrative.

Lewandowska made a different choice. So did VNS Matrix, Riot Grrrl, Guerrilla Girls, Pussy Riot, Laboria Cuboniks.

They didn't ask permission. They created the record themselves.

See you next Sunday, anonymous reader.