On Wednesday, March 8th, City of Women announced the five winners of the Women on Women Awards out of 180 nominations.
This year's award winners are: Tita Mayer; journalist and editor of Radio Slovenia, who is raising awareness about the position of women in Slovenia; Feminalz; a collective of transgender entities, which expresses itself through its choreographic and performative practice in the feminist Technoburlesque Tatovi podob; Jasna Podreka, sociologist, researcher, who works in the field of prevention of violence against women; Lezbična četrt, festival that reflects and co-creates local lesbian art, movement, community and creativity; and Nada Žgank, a photographer who significantly contributes to the preservation of cultural memory and the historicization of numerous artistic projects, social-activist initiatives, festivals, performances, concerts and exhibitions.
Explanation of the members of the City of Womnen Panel - Pia Skušek, Evan Grm, Tamara Zablocki, Neža Oder and Suzana Tratnik:
Feminalz is a collective of transgender entities who use choreographic and performative practices as a means of expression performed in their feminist techno-burlesque show Image Snatchers. Since their first performance in 2013 they have been challenging social norms and political correctness with their originally created pieces, staging a sharp political satire by means of contemporary burlesque and cabaret. They use “a fun game of dressing-up” to expose, illuminate and parody those aspects of social madness that at once make the audiences laugh and fill them with horror.
“The techno-burlesque is a silent comedy of the body that parodies the rigidity of social roles,” they say about the show. “It uncritically appropriates, copies and merges femininity, masculinity, family relationships, machismo and other corrupted social roles that are mistakenly considered normative.”
Image Snatchers question ideas of shame, taboos and censorship, placing them in the context of the emerging spaces of queer, the body and (its) representation. By exploring liminal identities and narratives, the Snatchers tenaciously give voice to and create a place for that sort of engaged obscenity which can uncover the perversity of the social norms, to decipher the constructed entrapment, and to liberate by means of embodiment. Their underground performance, which celebrates its tenth anniversary in April this year, is in constant flux and development, each reprise deviating from the previous one. The Image Snatchers — as is the intrinsic nature of all images — are always in the making. They are resident artists at Club Gromka at the Autonomous Cultural Centre Metelkova Mesto.
8. 3. 2023, City of Women, Women on Women Award
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