Feminist Futures

BUT the Future is only dark from outside Leap into it—and it EXPLODES with Light

—Mina Loy, “Aphorisms on Futurism”

From the apocalyptic visions of Hieronymus Bosch and the manifestos of the Italian Futurists to Anne Washburn’s Mr. Burns, A Post-Electric Play or Jennifer Haley’s The Nether, humanity’s future has long provided rich material for cultural producers. Whether one imagines that we are on a long trajectory toward progress and utopia, a bullet train toward self-destruction, or deep in a cycle of birth, growth, decay, and renewal, contemporary art seems preoccupied with how to understand and face an uncertain future. In some sectors, Futurist discourse is remarkably anti-human. The visions of the Italian Futurists of the early twentieth century feel increasingly prescient as the movement’s most notorious attributes—namely its misogyny and fascist tendencies—resurface more visibly in contemporary culture, particularly in the glorification of war, patriotism, and a general “scorn for woman” that F.T. Marinetti first declared in 1909.

Italian scholar Lucia Re argues that the use of anti-woman discourse, even if it was largely exaggerated for rhetorical flair, has left a lasting impact on our notions of avant-garde art. Other futurisms center on technology look to advancements in machine learning and development to overcome the limitations of the human mind and body and computing highly complex algorithms, perform research, and organize data more efficiently than humans ever could. For example, transhumanists imagine what it would be like to upload our consciousness, thus ostensibly making human lifespans equal to that of the universe; in this case, the human, as we know it, will become extinct.

But we might turn instead to feminist avant-garde artist Mina Loy, who, according to Re, “welcomed futurism as an invitation to creativity into a positive, affirmative view of life’s connection with art.”¹ Or the work of the Neo-Futurists, who make fast, new theatre in ever-changing productions such as The Infinite Wrench. The emphasis on movement and dynamism that characterized Futurist painting are also familiar to cultural critics in the increasing interest in network analysis or Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of flows. In contemporary feminist theory, we might look to Karen Barad, whose book Meeting the Universe Halfway articulates a sophisticated vocabulary for describing the interactivity of material and discursive phenomena, how matter and meaning are inextricably linked.

It’s in the spirt of thinkers like Loy, Haraway, and Barad that I viewed a series of feminist performances staged at the 2019 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. That year, the festival included over 3,500 productions in more than 300 venues across the city. While the festival had no specific theme, a number of the performances focused on women and envisioned futures focused on collaboration, intergenerational learning, and collective empowerment. Often engaging directly with feminist theory and exploring the relationships between women and the worlds they move in, these performances meditate on how humans might leverage the past to build a better, more collaborative future.

Theatre Re’s Birth, directed by Guillaume Pigé, uses physical theatre storytelling to explore one experience of women and their families that often remains hidden. Following a successful premiere at the London International Mime Festival, Birth explores how the experience of pregnancy loss reverberates across three generations of women. A diary and bustling dinner table serve as motifs that linked audiences to grandmother, mother, and daughter. The drama of the piece comes not from a breakdown in traditional family unity, but in the way the family lives whole-heartedly with one another even in the face of loss. As the women shared and read the diaries of those who came before, there was a sense of healing derived from the wisdom and experiences of other women. Ultimately, the piece ruminates on human fragility and treats the entire scope of the human experience—from pre-birth to death—with immense tenderness and dignity.

The most visceral aspects of loss were presented without any reference to language. The performance made use of exhilarating tempo changes, moving quickly through various...