Now You Can Go was an events programme inspired by Italian feminisms of the late 1960s, 1970s and 1980s that Helena Reckitt initiated and organised with six feminist colleagues. It took place across four London art venues, the ICA, The Showroom, SPACE, and Raven Row, 1-13 December 2015.

Juxtaposing historical with contemporary positions, the series explores feminist concepts of generation and genealogy. It asked whether practices of consciousness-raising and collectivity might help us to combat the fragmentation, exhaustion and anxiety that we experience under networked capitalism. The programme drew inspiration from Italian feminisms, including the work of collectives formed in the 1970s: Rivolta Femminile (Female Revolt), Libreria delle Donne di Milano (Milan Women’s Bookstore collective), and Lotta Femminista (Feminist Struggle).

A touchstone was the work of Carla Lonzi, the writer and cofounder of Rivolta Femminile, and her refusal of power and rejection of masculine creativity that exploits female supportive activity. This process of ‘deculturation’ entailed Lonzi’s withdrawal from her roles as an art critic, as a feminist leader, and from her relationship with her lover, the sculptor Pietro Consagra, which she documented in a dialogue between them called Vai pure (Now You Can Go).

The programme explored four inter-related themes: Revisiting, Translating and Annotating earlier periods of feminism, especially those of second wave Italian feminisms; Social Reproduction; Affective Politics and Human Strike; and Anti-Assimilationist Feminisms.

Now You Can Go grew out of the Feminist Duration Reading Group which meets monthly at Space Studios in London. The programme was initiated by Helena Reckitt and developed by participants from the Feminist Duration Reading Group including Angelica Bollettenari, Giulia Casalini, Diana Georgiou, Laura Guy, Irene Revell and Amy Tobin. It was coordinated by Helena Reckitt with Dimitra Gkitsa.

Full programme details can be found on the nowyoucango tumblr site:
http://nowyoucango.tumblr.com/about

• Reckitt, Helena and Moser, Gabrielle. 2016. Feminist Tactics of Citation, Annotation, and Translation: Reflections on the Now You Can Go programme. On.Curating: CURATING in feminist thought(29), pp. 42-48. [Article]

Helena Reckitt was primarily responsible for initiating the following programme elements. Other members of the programming team took primary responsibility for other parts of the Now You Can Go programme.

Panel Discussion: On Social Reproduction
Saturday 5 December
11.30pm – 1.30pm
ICA Cinema 1
www.ica.org.uk/whats-on/now-you-can-go-social-reproduction
Speakers: co-founders of the critical/activist organisation Plan C, Nicholas Beuret (by Skype); Marissa Begonia; Guardian journalist Dawn Foster; art historian Larne Abse Gogarty and artist Pablo Pakula. Chaired by academic Emma Dowling.

Pablo Pakula’s performance intervention was developed with Giulia Casalini and Diana Georgiou.
Panel was developed with panel chair Emma Dowling.

Feeling backwards, Nina Wakeford
Two night lecture and workshop on Sunday 6 December and Tuesday 8 December
7.15pm - 9.15pm
Raven Row
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/feeling-backwards-a-lecture-and-workshop-nina-wakeford-tickets-19600403334
www.ravenrow.org

Panel Discussion - Rescue Missions: Women’s Art Recovered, Re-enacted, and Recuperated
Wednesday 9 December
6.30pm
ICA Cinema 1
www.ica.org.uk/whats-on/now-you-can-go-rescue-missions-women-s-art-recovered
Speakers: artist Sonia Boyce, director of the Live Art Development Agency, Lois Keidan, arts collector and supporter Valeria Napoleone and co-director of HollyBush Gardens, Lisa Panting. Chaired by art historian Amy Tobin.
Panel was developed with panel chair Amy Tobin.

Carla Lonzi Teach-In, Led by Teresa Kitler
Raven Row
Thursday 10 December
7.15pm – 9.15pm
Led by art historian Teresa Kittler
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/carla-lonzi-teach-in-led-by-art-historian-teresa-kittler-tick¬ets-19600613964
www.ravenrow.org

Our Future Network, Workshop led by Alex Martinis Roe
The Showroom
Thursday 10 and Friday 11 December 2015
10.30am–5pm
www.theshowroom.org/events/now-you-can-go
Workshop was coordinated by Angela Bolletinari.

Now You Can Go seminar
Saturday 12 December
11.30am – 10pm
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/now-you-can-go-seminar-tickets-19601045254
www.theshowroom.org/events/now-you-can-go
Day-and-evening-long seminar exploring legacies of feminist art, thinking and activism, especially in relation to Italian feminisms.
11.30am Introduction by Helena Reckitt
12pm-1.30pm
Don’t Think You Have Any Rights: The Challenges of Italian Feminisms
Talks by Fulvia Carnevale of Claire Fontaine; art theorist Marina Vishmidt (by Skype), and art theorist and Carla Lonzi specialist Giovanna Zapperi.
2.30pm – 4.00pm
The Challenges of Italian Feminisms Panel Discussion: keynote speakers Fulvia Carnevale of Claire Fontaine and Giovanna Zapperi are joined in discussion by artist Zach Blas and feminist legal theorist Maria Drakopoulou. Chaired by art historian Francesco Ventrella.
Including a screening of Alex Martinis Roe’s film A story from Circolo della rosa, 2014, about the Milan Women’s Bookstore Collective.
4.30pm – 6pm
In or Out?: On Leaving the Art World and Other Systems, Part 1
Artist Carla Cruz; artist Andrea Francke; and pedestrian and environmental activist Caroline Russell. Chaired by art historian Catherine Grant.
7pm – 8.30pm
In or Out?: On Leaving the Art World and Other Systems, Part 2
Curator and archivist Karen Di Franco; artist Karolin Meunier; artist Raju Rage; and Utopia Arts Artistic Director Frances Rifkin. Chaired by writer and curator Gabrielle Moser.
9pm – 9.30pm
A Feminist Chorus for Feminist Revolt by Lucy Reynolds
A spoken distillation of the monthly discussions and readings of Italian feminist texts made by the Feminist Duration Reading Group, and gathered into a score by Lucy Reynolds.

Herstories from Italy
Sunday 13 December
6pm – 8.30pm
The Showroom
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/herstories-from-italy-tickets-19601634015
www.theshowroom.org/events/now-you-can-go
Case studies on feminist artistic and militant collectives in Italy by art historian Katia Almerini (Cooperativa Beato Angelico), writer, researcher and curator Giulia Damiani (Le Nemesiache collective) and an exposition of contemporary feminist artistic collectives by Giulia Casalini on behalf of ArchivioQueerItalia.com. Followed by keynote talk by philosopher Olivia Guaraldo on polyvocality and sexual difference and the work of Adriana Cavarero, who is joined in conversation by cultural critic Angie Voela.
Panel developed in collaboration with panel chair Diana Georgiou.

Video documentation

Selected Now You Can Go events are documented on the websites of the ICA and Video in Common.

Now You Can Go - Fulvia Carnevale (Claire Fontaine)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHOSPlh_KIQ

Helena Reckitt Introduction
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWaLpqoAVbE&t=218s

The Challenges of Italian Feminism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxstImpSHe4

Giovanna Zapperi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgX_XFfKvSY

Marina Vishmidt
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKykupDhX4k

In or Out: On Leaving the Artworld and Other Systems, 1
http://nowyoucango.tumblr.com/about.
https://www.facebook.com/nowyoucango2015/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RfPmOwHfwk&t=42s

In or Out: On Leaving the Artworld and Other Systems, 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYIP59ca9e4&t=28s

Herstories from Italy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLF_XsSRBMo&t=312s

Herstories from Italy, Giulia Damiani
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5219iQGOBA

Katia Almerini
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryqrrSD4nFY&t=313s

Giulia Casalini
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryqrrSD4nFY&t=313s

Rescue Missions
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ml_yac4CMa8

On Social Reproduction
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3n5vJndZQw

FUNDERS

Funding

Now You Can Go was supported by the Arts Council of England, Grants for the Arts.

With additional support from EWVA European Women’s Video Art in the 70s and 80s (DJCAD, University of Dundee); Canada Council for the Arts; Swedish Arts Grants Committee’s International Programme for Visual Artists (IASPIS); Electra; and the Annual Fund, the Art Department, and the Women’s Art Library at Goldsmiths, University of London.

RELATED EVENTS

Programme collaborator and speaker Fulvia Carnevale of Claire Fontaine organised two follow up programmes in 2016. She edited an issue of the French/English bilingual journal May Revue, which included contributions from several Now You Can Go programme participants in addition to those of additional contributors. Volume 16, No 10, 2016
http://www.mayrevue.com/en/category/n16/

Carnival also organised the symposium “Work, strike and self-abolition. Feminist perspectives on the act of creating freedom” at La Monnaie in Paris.

Both the journal issue and the symposium aimed to update the debate on the process of subjectivation in the heart and on the outskirts of the creative process.

This questions were discussed in the light of feminist theories that have explored the question of subjectivity and the possibility of establishing non-utilitarian relationships, capable of producing a generalized expansion of the field of art and creation conceived not only as creation of works but as creations of life forms.
The proofreading the concept of work and criteria that measure productivity in our society was central to the event; the ratio between the recognized work and the underground and invisible one of everyday life, between production and reproduction (of others and oneself), between the artwork and its absence will be the subject of discussions and explorations from the different interveners.

Contributors: Claire Fontaine, Julia Bryan-Wilson, Elisabeth Lebovici, Helena Reckitt, Marina Vishmidt, Giovanna Zapperi.
The event coincided with the publication of a special issue of the bilingual French/English journal May Revue, edited by Claire Fontaine, on responses to Italian feminism and the resonance of the Now You Can Go programme.

https://www.monnaiedeparis.fr/en/nuit-blanche-2016

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/19465