What are the reasons for the widespread occurrence and reproduction of gender-based violence within cultural and artistic spaces and communities?

As Carolin Emcke puts it in Yes Means Yes and… (2022) “Instead of repressing the act, we repress talking about it. Thus it is not the act that is tabooed, but the talking about the act.” (our translation) The round table will therefore raise questions of (in)action, silence and look for ways to break this mode of action. We will look for ways to create cultural spaces and nightlife that are more inclusive, safer, and enjoyable for all of us. Together (with you) we will map the main or recurrent problems of gender-based violence in our local music, visual arts, theater, and other cultural and artistic scenes, and look for concrete mechanisms for holding perpetrators accountable for their actions. We will discuss the different ways of intervening and providing support to those who experience violence and to those who intervene in such cases.

Above all, we will imagine, by questioning existing practices (effective and ineffective), what utopian cultural spaces would look like and answer the question of how to get there, and how to build them.

Moderator: Lenča Ambrožič

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𝐌𝐚𝐣𝐚 𝐏𝐚𝐡𝐨𝐫, musician, DJ, sound technician and current programme manager at Monokel. She has been working actively in night and evening events for 20 years as an artist and 10 years in event management. She regularly collaborates with various collectives from Slovenia, Italy and former Yugoslavia.

𝐔𝐥𝐚 𝐊𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐣𝐜 𝐊𝐮𝐬̌𝐥𝐚𝐧 is completing her master’s degree at the Faculty of Arts, where her thesis focuses on tolerance and normalization of different forms of sexual harassment and gender-based violence. Since 2022, she has been a co-founder and active member of the Rejv Utopija collective, which works to raise awareness and reduce sexual and gender-based violence in nightlife through various activities (fieldwork, educational workshops, roundtables, talks). Her fields of interest are also media, music, and culture in which she participates mostly through her work at Radio Študent and co-organizing of festival Tresk.

𝐋𝐚𝐧𝐚 𝐊𝐫𝐢𝐳̌𝐚𝐣 is a member of the queer-feminist collective Ustanova and co-founder of an initiative Rave Utopia, which has been raising awareness about gender-based violence in nightlife with field interventions, workshops, and consultations since 2022. Lana is also writing a master’s thesis in cultural anthropology on the topic and runs workshops and participatory plays on the topic of prevention of peer violence and activation of non-violent masculinities.