To think through exhibition themes we will put in conversation Octavia Butler’s novel Dawn with two Khairani Barokka’s poems My mother calls me Srikandi and Moon Dances with Three Planets from Eve and Mary Are Having Coffee.

Considering Butler’s novels to have operated as a critical reference point for several generations of feminist and cyberfeminist theorists, from Donna Haraway to Sadie Plant and Luciana Parisi, we will examine a text from her first novel of the Xenogenesis’ trilogy, Dawn.

In a world devastated by a nuclear war that left the earth uninhabitable and humanity at the edge of extinction, Butler elaborates on the idea of anti-naturalism and the implications of alien becoming and becoming alien. For the characters of her novels the necessity of surviving forces them up against and beyond the limits of what it means to be human and what happens when gender, sexuality, identity, race and kinship collapse or do not count anymore.

Pushing the boundaries of poetry, performance art and storytelling, Khairani Barokka’s performative poetries examine how technology challenges understandings of nature and identity. In her works she looks at collective care and attention as the elements of psychic life that intersect with cultural, historical, and social constructions of identity and subjectivity. In many of her works she looks at disrupting hierarchical structures of power and heteropatriarchal systems of white supremacy and how these structures perpetuate an ableist world. She calls to attention traverses and traspasses of, to, upon bodies, both human/female and geographical/environmental, and draws precarious lines connecting points of toxicity and “unrest” in different nation-bodies of Southeast Asia.

The Feminist Duration Reading Group welcomes feminists of all genders and generations to explore the legacy and resonance of art, thinking and collective practice from earlier periods of feminism, in dialogue with contemporary practices and movements.

You can email info@mimosahouse.co.uk for the texts, but advance reading is not required as we will read out loud, together.

This event is part of our current exhibition, Alter Heroes Coalition, and is supported by Arts Council England.

Feminist Duration Reading Group at Mimosa House