Repairing Goddesses
the FHP developed the two-day program ‘Repairing Goddesses’ in collaboration with Boogaerdt/VanderSchoot. By performance, lectures, movement, hand-spinning, ritual and joint mending needlework, we learned about the connection between spinning thread and how its transformative ability relates to powerful ancient goddesses and witches.
This event took place on the occasion of the multimedia exhibition ‘Traveling Without Moving’ by performance artist duo Boogaerdt/VanderSchoot in TENT, Rotterdam.
Lecture: Max Dashú, performance lecture: Emmeline de Mooij, energizing ritual: Revé Terborg, drop-spindle workshop: Joost Post and Emma van Herk, Movements modern witchcraft: Elia Vitadamo.
Photography: Rosa Quis
The program included a special lecture and talk with American feminist historian and writer Max Dashú, an expert since the 1970s on the origins of patriarchy and subversive female iconography.
Mending damaged clothing functioned as a symbolic act of repairing holes in history. It was also an act of resistance; by practicing slowing down, we oppose the capitalist principles of work discipline and exploitation.
Bogaerdt/VanderSchoot: “An old world is dying, and a new one is struggling to be born. To dream it into being requires a different narrative, a different conception of our heroes and gods, and a different source of inspiration. Hidden in de body of the earth and the depths of our own psyche, other narratives await, older than the patriarchal worldview that has led to our present impasse. These are the stories of the Great Mother, in all her incarnations, which became a great source of inspiration to us.”