* "WHY HEROINES'WAVE"
In Ancient Greek, Hērōḯnē and the suffix ḯnē is gender-neutral term for a person who acts with courage.
This platform is joined by humans who strive to produce cultural events in countries where freedom of expression is in danger. Whether in air, water or in the space-time continuum, our community keeps moving from one place to another, creating wavelike connections & vibrations.
Our name is a tribute to
Claude Cahun essay Heroines, 1930.
"Under this mask, another mask.
Shuffle the cards.
Masculine? Feminine?
It depends on the situation.
Neuter is the only gender that suits me.
I know where I go, I want to guide you,
My awkward design, will not injure you.
The non gendered is the heroine among heroines."
WHAT?
HW* is an independent research and experimentation platform that produces fieldwork on womxn artists struggles (THE EDDIES), podcasts on queer stories (THE WEAVE), digital projects (THE ENCLOSED GARDEN ONLINE), festival of performances, exhibitions, residency programs (THE ENCLOSED GARDEN FESTIVAL).
WHY?
> We Investigate : About women artists' struggles in places where they can't create.
> We Connect: People that can't travel, to deconstruct ethnocentrism.
> We Empower : Talented Artists who create secretly and who never got grants.
> We Produce: LIVE & ONLINE projects about real intimacy.
> We Learn: Through art residencies, exchanging skills, and knowledge.
> We Create: Artworks with a specific curatorial method to get people closer.
> We Heal: Our projects are devoted to emotional processing & collective healing.
WHO?
The cultural manager & art director Celia Stroom (France) decided in 2018 to initiate a network of womxn activists who feels isolated in their practice and want to join forces to fundraise grants and produce cross-borders cooperation projects.
She was first joined by the film director and producer Salome Jashi (Georgia), in 2020 by the artists & social mediator Bussaraporn Thongchai (Thailand), sound designer Diane Barbé (France), the researcher Annina Lehmann. In 2022, HW is co-managed together with the sound researcher and social mediator Kim Wichera (Germany), the researcher in environmental issues Anja Salzer (Germany), the specialist on women's health at Doctors without borders Aurelie Brousse (France), and Nina Pixel our precious team building coach.
HW collaborated within the last 5 years with 126 artists from 44 countries. They mostly collaborate artists who feel invisible and silenced by the society where they live in.
In 2023, the team is joined by Kyrgyz cultural manager Syinat Zholdosheva and Greek film producer Antigoni Papantoni to develop THE ENCLOSED GARDEN festival in both countries.
BACKGROUND & SPONSORS
2018 First fieldwork in India and Georgia
Celia Stroom & Salomé Jashi investigate on womxn artists struggles, needs, and conditions to imagine the first editions of The Enclosed Garden Festival (TEG), a residency and exhibition program for women in authoritarian regimes. Info bellow.
Supported by I-Portunus EU program
2019 TEG#1 GEORGIA (live festival)
co-producers Salomé Jashi & Celia Stroom.
Supported by : Goethe Institut, French Institut, Womens fund of Georgia NGO, European Cultural Foundation, Creative Europe, Ministry of Culture of Georgia / Program Creative Georgia.
2020 TEG#2 (online digital exhibition)
co-producers : Bussaraporn Thongchai, Diane Barbé, Salomé Jashi, Celia Stroom.
2021 TEG#3 THAILAND (live festival)
co-producers Bussaraporn Thongchai & Celia Stroom.
Supported by : Coproduction fund of Goethe Institut, French Institut, UN WOMEN BANGKOK, IFA Exhibition funding.
2021 THE EDDIES is a series of articles, SWOT and field recordings about our nomadic festival TEG. The first post is about women artists struggles in Uzbekistan.
2021 TEG#4 SILK ROAD (preparatory fieldwork)
in Uzbekistan / Supported by IFA Artists contact Grant
2022 THE W(E)AVE is an experimental visual & sound app harboring music compositions & intimate testimonials from queer voices from all over the world. It has been imagined by Diane Barbé and Celia Stroom.
Supported by : Music Board Berlin
2022 TEG#4 SILK ROAD (preparatory fieldwork)
in Kyrgyzstan / Supported by Akademie der Künste
You are a researcher, artist, cultural manager?
You feel driven by the same values > Join the wave +
We always have more chance to get grants when we unite forces.
THE ENCLOSED GARDEN
Toward a new format of festival less capitalist more intimist.
The inaugural event has been designed by the art director of performances and museologist Celia Stroom. After 15 years working for museums, dance companies and music ensembles, she has researched to conceive a new format of exhibition in contrast to the traditional collections-centred museum models.
Far from the clinical white cube model, the body of the visitor is immersed in a labyrinth of spontaneous artistic proposals that grow 3 weeks before during an intensive art residency based on body and nature.
How an exhibition project can re-create links among humans ?
"The enclosed garden" (TEG) is composed of a residency of research and creation isolated in a safe space in the countryside. It's followed by a hidden exhibition installed in a former building. The audience informed by networking and by word of mouth rings the bell and open the door of a space designed by 10 women (5 from the host country and 5 from abroad). Room after room, they discover a free space where womxn work towards opening up about psychological, political, societal perceptions.
How locked away from our intimate realities are we?
The project challenges our personal perception of Nature (outside) and our own nature (inside). The enclosed garden is a place where we contemplate, dialogue with each element to cut ourselves off from our society where we learn to deny the Nature and Our unique individual nature. The enclosed garden project is an island, bringing everyone far from daily routine and offering a space for equality, learning, healing. The short duration of a month triggers a searing shock which feeds the creative energy. Every day we investigate links between our past and present, our vision of reality and our surrealist imaginations, between utopia and dystopia. This exhibition project works around this tension, generating an inner explosion, that artists share later on with the audience, who are offered the possibility to experience an intimate moment, far from the clinical and aseptic atmosphere of the white cubes. We call this exhibition format an EXPLOSITION.
What are the conditions ?
TEG happens every year in a new country. Producing such an ambitious project represents significant costs. Therefore, HW raises funds to prepare the project, to finance the residency space and to cover the budget for the production of the exhibition. t also provides artists with accommodation on site and daily stipends. If artists cannot apply for a travel grant, HW support travel fees as well. Moreover, all artists receive equal fees for the exhibition, no matter the country where they come from.
georgia
22 countries THAILAND
2019 2020 2021
> We question the fear of intimacy in places where emotional expression, self-reflection are not valued.
> We advocate transnational collaborations between countries where sharing intimate topics is taboo.
> We imagine scenographies to get people closer.
This platform for digital and sound projects weaves intimate testimonials of queer humans. Radio and Websites can be heard and seen from mobiles, everywhere. No matter where we are, listening to testimonials from all around the world, we suddenly enter the private sphere of humans who release often for the first time hidden thoughts.
Through online digital interfaces, the voices of spontaneous contributors, in line with the ethics of sociological research, are protected through anonymity, but help shed light on larger issues of oppression, isolation and silencing.
Our LAB strives to uplift and empower these marginalized voices: all of a sudden, they are the voices of the many.
ENTER OUR VISUAL & SOUND PODCAST
created by Diane Barbé & Celia Stroom, funded by Music Board Berlin.
THE W(E)AVE (NEW)
Towards digital intimacy.
?? INTIMACY ??
Artists who join our projects are focusing their research on 'what intimacy is' from a psychological, political, sociological and anthropological perspective.
Intimacy implies reciprocity, transparency, unreserved exchange. Members of the Heroines'Wave aim to follow these principles in their process of collaboration since Intimacy is based on a very close familiar and effective connection with others.
Heroines'Wave strive to dismantle explicit and implicit forms of censorship in order to better apprehend together the social and ontological resonances of intimacy in our capitalist & individualist society.
< Listen the artists who joined our projects.
Heroines
research
create
perform
about
INTIMACy
Now, let's open the door of enclosed gardens,
these inner worlds, shelters, prisons or pyres!
With such willful extravagance, gardening the unconscious, providing every reasons to let go its hold,
from beating hearts to wild grasses,
immersing in the heart of human psychology,
gardens of quills, of thrilling sounds,
all these womxn from all over the world know well how to bewitch,
and
weave dream
to reality.
NEW
ONLINE EXHIBITION
