Alex Martinis Roe

Developed with artist Alex Martinis Roe, Productive Refusals is one of twenty propositions for feminist collective practices which form the subject of Martinis Roe’s 2016 film Our Future Network, 2016, and which premiered as part of Martinis Roe’s 2015 exhibition To Become Two. The proposition, Productive Refusals, is that saying ‘no’ can be a productive way to change existing habits and systems. It can open up new and unexpected possibilities, and change situations for the better. The proposition was developed as part of the Our Future Network residential workshop in Germany in May 2016. It asked the twenty female workshop participants to think of a time when they had said ‘yes,’ but felt that they should have said ‘no,’ and to think of how they might have said ‘no’ in ways that proved productive. The proposition also invited them to reflect on a time that someone had said ‘no’ to them, and how this in turn opened up the possibilities for change. Possible responses to situations in...

The term 'anticipation' aims at proposing an affirmative approach to the research as intends to elude the use of 'post-isms' and 'future-ism' terminology, which have been largely employed as parameters to discuss present conditions and their responsibilities. 'Anticipation' responds therefore to the immanent need of 'moving forward' (of 'becoming') – as precondition for any cultural institution - but being grounded in the present and escaping the past/future rhetoric in favour of a cross-temporal dimension. Anticipation seems to be a central responsibility for cultural and artistic institutions who have to act as a porous 'we' so as to make possible for a collective desire to emerge. In these terms Spaces of Anticipation aims at gathering practices and relations able to 're-territorialize' existing models of institutions through a genuine 'desire of becoming' by acting within present and unexpected conditions. E...

In tandem with To Become Two, Alex Martinis Roe's exhibition and commission at The Showroom in London, she was joined in conversation by Helena Reckitt. The discussion explored Martinis Roe's engagement with international feminist communities and their political practices through her research-based art practice. In exploring how Martinis Roe's longterm collaborative artworks aim to make virtual pasts actual, Martinis Roe and Reckitt considered the implications of being a “dutifully undutiful” feminist, who acknowledges earlier feminist efforts without being overly predetermined by them. Highlighting how Martinis Roe’s artistic medium can be considered that of human networks, the conversation explored how her art makes visible the relational conditions which engender art, theory and political movements. Martinis Roe discussed her 2016 film Our Future Network, which was part of The Showroom exhibition and which Reckitt herself took part in. Discussing the film's creati...