The F Word Captured 4th-Wave Feminist Art
“HELLO, SELFIE! NYC (2014) as seen in Robert Adanto’s The F Word (2015).
Since its initial screening in 2015, Robert Adanto’s documentary The F Word has provided viewers with a snapshot of what radical, “4th-Wave” feminist artists were up to in a pre-Pussy Hat, pre-Trump Brooklyn. As noted New School Lecturer, Kristen Sollee, wrote The F Word was the first film to explore fourth-wave feminism; moreover, back in 2013, when Adanto began making the film, “fourth-wave feminism” remained a rogue term that academics hadn’t recognized. Through a series of extensive interviews with artists working in performance, photography, video, and digital media, as well as scholars in the field, such as Dr. Kathy Battista, Director of Contemporary Art at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, New York and author of New York New Wave: The Legacy of Feminist Art in Emerging Practices (IB Tauris, 2019), The F Word provides a rich context for viewing the feminist art of today. Adanto focuses his lens on art by women in the current digital age. If 1920 gave women the right to vote, a radical breakthrough in the expression of power at the time, then the 2010s leading into 2020 is an extension of equally important dialogues around power, sex, and ownership of the self.
In conjunction with the (DIS)OBEDIENT exhibition, ArtServe will host a screening of “The F Word,” a documentary film by Robert Adanto.
When: Saturday, March 21 from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.
Where: ArtServe, 1350 E Sunrise Blvd, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33304
Register here via Eventbrite for a special screening of The F Word.
3 Questions with Producer, Director: Robert Adanto
Through your films, you’re no stranger to studying female artists at work. What are some similarities or overlapping themes, if any, between Pearls on the Ocean Floor (2008), The F Word (2015) and Born Just Now (2018)? Major takeaways, i.e. (What can you tell us about the direction of these films that we (the audience) wouldn’t get anywhere else?)
Robert Adanto: Making films like The F Word, Pearls on the Ocean Floor, and Born Just Now has afforded me an opportunity to dig deep, to educate myself, and to learn from some truly inspiring women. That said, my opinions and what I have learned about feminism comes from being a student of that history and practice. My experience with these artists has taught me that it is very difficult to be a feminist artist because their work not only explores the messy contradictions of living and making art as a woman, it intersects with history and the political. Internally I think they all know that real change means structural change. I also think every one of them sees an interconnectedness of things like race, gender, class, sexuality, power, etc…
In a previous interview with ArtSlant, you mentioned that women artists are under-represented and feminist art exists largely on the fringes. Have you seen any changes in society or the art world at large since the initial release of the film that would suggest otherwise? In other words — has anything changed (in the continuing dialogue about the feminist 4th-wave)?
RA: Since 2015 there has been a spate of shows that focused on feminist art. For example, The F Word was presented as part of the Guerrilla Girls’ Twin City Takeover in Minneapolis at the Walker Art Center, and was screened again in association with Black Sheep Feminism: The Art of Sexual Politics, a Dallas Contemporary exhibition that focused on the work of four radical feminist artists active since the 1970s: Joan Semmel, Anita Steckel, Betty Tompkins, and Cosey Fanni Tutti. Shows like this made it feel like feminism had been institutionalized and less marginalized, but there is still a lot of work to be done. When it comes to the art market, a subject covered in the film, when it comes to what top female artists make, it’s a fraction of what their male counterparts make.
What would feminist art look like in the next 50 years? 100?
RA: Today, we see a more pluralistic feminism, a more global feminism than it was in 1970. Their agenda is much bigger than just a gender. It’s less about the oppression of women and more about the oppression of any marginalized group. Personally, I hope that feminism isn’t even an issue in the future. When it comes to radical feminist performance, I’d like to think that there will be artists like Narcissister, who is very interested in the work of Carolee Schneemann, Adrian Piper, and Joan Jonas, and the legacy of these early pioneers, but who is also pushing feminist art in new directions. I think she’s an incredible artist whose works explore race, the body, the consumption of bodies, and at the same time is a very sophisticated form of activism. I think there will continue to be artists like this that build on and are cognizant of the work that has come before them.
Self-awareness and power in the digital age
Left to Right: Narcissister, RaFia Santana, Leah Schrager.
One of the most fascinating reoccurring themes in the film is hard to miss and easy to dismiss in a digital landscape where selfies abound. Exploring the image of the self is integral to photographer, video and multi-media maven, Leah Schrager, who states “For me what’s important is exploring and talking about this relationship I have to my own image…so if I’m marking on my own image I’m creating a painting, I am in the image itself. I’m the model, and I’m also the artist.” An almost exact reverberation of the quote opening the film by her predecessor Carolee Schneemann: “I wanted my actual body to be combined with the work as an integral material — a further dimension of the construction…I am both image-maker and image.” To be labeled narcissistic for using their bodies and self-image is a judgment that falls short of understanding the true power in the process. Often dubbed selfie-feminism, the self-portraits of RaFia Santana challenge the tendency to invalidate self-observation in this way. “What do you know about yourself if you’re not observing if you’re just sort of running on autopilot?” says Santana in the film.
Exerting control over their bodies and narratives dominates if not defines feminism both in the world of creatives and outside of it. The performance piece “500,000” by the queer transnational collective, Go! Push Pops calls out the rape and sexual assault of five hundred thousand of these cases in the military. All this just a few years before the breakout of the #MeToo Movement in mainstream media. Sexuality undoubtedly continues to play a role in this power dynamic between women and the longstanding, deeply embedded patriarchal matrix. With the expansive and boundary-less nature of the web, these 4th-wavers prove that their art is a response to the status quo with the internet as a key ingredient that facilitates their craft, something that was inexistent to previous eras of the feminist movement.
Go! Push Pops “500,000” performance at the 2013 Art in Odd Places, NYC, NY as seen in Robert Adanto’s The F Word (2015)
The use of archetypes naturally emerges in many of the works featured in the film. Narcissister, Kate Durbin, and Ann Hirsch, to name a few, explore and even exploit themselves to question power dynamics between and within the self, as well as with the public. Against the backdrop of New York City streets, Narcissister with the unmistakeable anonymity of her mask walks bare-breasted in one of her performance-video installations, where both nudity and the streets can be considered points of vulnerability for anyone. This level of engagement with the public is further explored when she recruits other women to walk down the streets of New York bare-chested and wearing the ‘Narcissister’ mask. Kate Durbin’s “Cloud 9” online performance explores an alter-ego that embodies our fantasies and desires. Here, Durbin, known for her “Hello, Selfie!” performances, pushes the audience to grapple with an alter-ego that is both constrained by financial circumstances and free to explore transactional power relationships within a real-life universe online.
Owning their sexuality and image underpins the true nature of power at play throughout the film. In different scenarios it asks who is doing the objectification and how does that change the conversation. In another dimension of power, an underlying conversation around money, self-worth, and societal perceptions of value presides. Some artists like performer Sadaf, explains that making an object to sell it is a problem for her. As in Durbin’s “Cloud 9” this intersection between money, self-worth and a woman’s right to create her identity as she pleases creates friction which arguably, remains unresolved in the art world. There is a conversation to be had here about what we value as a society and how we express this value, and that includes the work of artists who lead, disrupt, and challenge outdated modes of being. At the core of the film is how these artists take up arms with their art forms to create worlds that traverse old archetypal narratives of power, victimhood, sexuality while creating new ones.
“Don’t let anybody, male or female, get in the way of doing your best work. To do your best work as a woman is the biggest feminist gesture you can do.” — Rachel Mason
“Starseeds” by Rachel Mason, as featured in The F Word (2015)
Ultimately, films like The F Word not only expose the individual triumphs and joys of artists at work, it gifts the general public with a deeper understanding of what it means to create art in the 21st century. It is evident that the value of what they make operates in a realm that goes beyond the commodification of art. Until the greater cultural consciousness reaches the level of awareness that this handful of creators exhibit, the art world, and feminism itself will continue to be in the negotiations phase that has defined it since its inception.
Leah Schrager
“I think the fourth-wave is ardent about gender equity. Today’s feminism has expanded its concerns beyond the oppression of women, that’s for sure. I would also say that today’s feminism, as I see it, is less of a monolith when it comes to ideology. There appears to be several feminisms in this wave and that’s its strength.”
— Robert Adanto
Other noteworthy online sources for The F Word:
Frank, Priscilla. “Fourth-Wave Feminist Artists Kicking A** And Showing It Too.” HuffPost, HuffPost, 18 Dec. 2015, www.huffpost.com/entry/fourth-wave-feminist-artists_n_566a1b8ee4b009377b24860a?guccounter=1.
Jansen, Char. “Feminists on Film: Documenting the 4th Wave.” ArtSlant, ArtSlant, 26 Oct. 2015, www.artslant.com/9/articles/show/44298.
Jansen, Charlotte. “This New Doc Profiles America’s Fourth Wave Feminist Artists.” Dazed, 26 Nov. 2015, www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/28588/1/get-to-know-america-s-most-subversive-feminist-artists.
Kane, Ashleigh. “Instagram Is a New Gallery Space for These US Female Artists.” Dazed, Dazed Digital, 27 Nov. 2015, www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/28620/1/hit-follow-on-these-inspirational-radical-female-artists.
Sollee, Kristen. “The F Word Explores 4th Wave Feminist Performance Art.” HuffPost, HuffPost, 7 Dec. 2017, www.huffpost.com/entry/the-f-word-explores-4th-w_b_8634476.
